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Show . inn 1 - - ' BY "SA3RV.-B. HJL&H NEA Service;. .rltr. 1 WASHINGTON, C Like a j V refreshing draft of optimism, after the pessimism that has blanketed blan-keted Washington during the days of oil and graft investigations, comes the cheerful hopefulnes of the beer brigade. Hopefully if not expectantly, they have descended en masse on the House judiciary committee to .petition and implore that the Volstead Vol-stead lid be lifted to permit a foam-;lng foam-;lng brew which may contain up to i2.75 per cent of alcohol. The present pres-ent limit of one-half of one per cent I kick in beer, they insist, is driving thousands to drink hard drink. It is making millionaires of our tion barrier. The least conspicuous of the dry forces sits away over on the left side of the big room, a note pad on his knee, jotting down the high spots of the wet arguments. H smiles complacently, as though h already knew the answer the committee com-mittee will hand down. Yes, it's Wayne B. Wheeler, wheel-horse of prohibition, genera counsel and director of the nation Anti-Saloon League. JUDGE PRIEST of Missouri, ruddy-faced, white-mustached, benevolent looking, who says h neved drank over "perhaps a dozen bottles of beer" in his life, but who holds he ought to have the right to bootleggers, ruining dispositions digestions, filling asylums and graveyards and making lawbreakers lawbreak-ers of high and low alike! SAM GOMPERS, champion of the workers' right to life, liberty and happiness, tolls the committee that all these were infringed by the ban on beer. Sam argues that far from having a detrimental effect on labor, a ' '"good, palatable, nourishing beer, with warmth In it," would do more to stimulate sobriety and earnest effort and contentment than all the "uplift" work of all the social and civic agencies in Christendom. PR the convenience of the committee. com-mittee. 61 "beer bills," proposing propos-ing modification of the Volstead percentage of alcohol, have been consolidated in the one hearing. The drys. duly notified, are on hand to drink in the testimony and prepare for rebuttal. Mostly they 1 are middie-aged or elderly, more than half of them womea. Many display W. C T. U. ribbons, laW away In mothballs when the 18th amendment' .was enacted but resurrected for the campaign to drink It If he wished, argues the legal aspect of prohibition. "It infringes both personal liberty lib-erty and the rights of the states," he declares. "But the states. Including Missouri, Mis-souri, duly ratified the amendment, didn't they?" inquires Foster of Ohio. "Yes." "Then the only point at issue Is whether 2.73 per cent beer is within with-in the prohibition of 'intoxicating' beverages." the chair holds. o JOSEPH DOREECK, of St. Louis Missouri Is well represented tells the committee of the pathological patho-logical necessity for alcohol if the human body ts to live. Dorbeck is a doctor and a scientist. He presents pre-sents a brief which ho says proves, indisputably, that the human body has a "tolerance" for alcohol up to 3 per cent In beverages, therefore 2.79-per cent is not intoxicating. it 'Bu t," t n terjec ta Summers of Texas in" a high, querulous voice, "giantng the human necessity for alcohol, doesn't the human body, if It is properly ted, produce alcohol for itself?" "Yes," Dorbeck concedes, "the human bodv Is a model still." |