Talk:Wickersham Commission

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Commission Recommendations

I respectfully offer the following information quoted from an October 24, 1932 newspaper column by H. L. Mencken entitled "PRE-MORTEM"

"It seems to me that a fair reading of the record indicates that Dr. Hoover expected the Wickersham Commission to bring in a dry report. There were, to be sure, several wets on it, but the chairman, as the events showed, could be trusted, and so, apparently, could a majority of the members. Every hint that issued from official quarters while the commission was sitting pointed to a report satisfactory to the Hoover-Anti-Saloon League combination. Unluckily, there were honest men among the members, even on the dry side, and their investigation convinced them that Prohibition was not only a failure, but also a public nuisance. So they said so in their report.

"Everyone will recall what painful scenes that report produced in the White House. On the appointment of the commission it had been the public understanding—and it was a fair inference from everything that Hoover had ever said openly on the subject—that its recommendations would be followed. But instead of following them Hoover permitted his office to send out a false version of the report, representing it to be dry in tendency, and then hasten to announce loudly that he was still dry himself, and unalterably opposed to any abandonment of the Eighteenth Amendment. The professional drys rejoiced, but the country coughed behind its hand. There was plainly something tricky about the whole business." (emphasis added)

Source: Mencken, H. L. edited by Moos, Malcolm; A Carnival of Buncombe; Baltimore, John Hopkins Press; 1956 (pages 268-269)

Please note that October 24, 1932 would have been in the waning days of the Hoover administration, only 15 days prior to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt on November 8, 1932.

Mencken used the title "Dr." ironically, although nearly all the prominent men he skewered in his column had managed to accumulate at least one—and in most cases more than one—honorary LL.D. from this or that university.

Dick Kimball (talk) 17:10, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Source

The source for this Wikipedia entry, when it was started on 11-10-05, was “Temperance Movement Groups and Leaders in the U.S. The material in bold is from that source.David Justin 18:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Wickersham Commission was established in May of 1929 when President Herbert Hoover appointed George W. Wickersham (1858-1936) to head the National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement, popularly called the Wickersham Commission.

The Commission was an 11-member group charged with identifying the causes of criminal activity and to make recommendations for appropriate public policy. The emphasis was almost entirely on the widespread violations of national alcohol prohibition. The Commission documented the widespread evasion of prohibition and the numerous counterproductive effects it was having on American society in the Wickersham report, primarily written by August Vollmer. Rather than recommending the repeal of prohibition, as many expected, it recommended that much more aggressive and extensive law enforcement should be employed in an effort to force compliance.

The Commission also investigated police interrogation tactics. It concluded that "[t]he third degree---the inflicting of pain, physical or mental, to extract confessions or statements---is widespread throughout the country."

Franklin P. Adams, a columnist for the New York World, summarized the Commission's report with this poem:

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.
It can't stop what it's meant to stop.
We like it.
It's left a trail of graft and slime,
It don't prohibit worth a dime,
It's filled our land with vice and crime.

Nevertheless, we're for it.

Sources

Vernon, John. The Wickersham Commission and William Monroe Trotter. Negro History Bulletin, 1999 (January-March).
Miller, Marc L. and Wright, Ronald F. Criminal Procedures, Cases, Statutes, and Executive Materials. Second Ed. 2003.
Records of the Wickersham Commission