The 'Sham Report

The Wickersham report, product of more than nineteen months of expert investigation, is a stand-off pure and simple. Whatever the endeavor, the result is a document that is all things to all men. Read one way, neither wets nor dry can extract much solace from it; read another, both can find comfort in it, the wets because nearly all of the individual opinions favor their side of the cause, and the dry because the report as a whole stands for the existing order of things.

To say that it is a queer document is to put the case mildly. Of the eleven members of the commission, ten subscribe to the general recommendations, which are dry in effect and in implication. But six members, in the individual opinions which all had the privilege of setting forth, strike a note not at all in accord with the conclusions of the committee as a whole. Two of them advocate absolute repeal, and the four others would have the Amendment revised to lodge with Congress the power to (1) continue the present system of national prohibition, or (2) to remit the matter in whole or in part to the States, or (3) "to adopt any system of effective control." The only consistent members of the commission appear to be the wet Mr. Lemann, who refuses to sign, and Chairman Wickersham, who is a thorough-going dry and so writes in his individual report. Of the four remaining members, all would favor the revised Amendment after further trial of enforcement. In other words, a wet commission by some strange twist of mind and mathematics, has succeeded in getting out a dry report. It should rank with the great achievements of history. --Boston Transcript.