strikes me as attaching too much importance to nothing, absolutely nothing, and a subject unworthy of your consideration.

I can safely say that forty years ago if anybody had brought a bill like this Hepburn-Dolliver bill before this same committee I believe that the originator, together with the bill, would have been thrown in the waste basket. They would have considered it an insult to their intelligence to have a bill as ambiguous as this brought before them. And then when you ask them what the bill means, they say, "Why, to stop people from drinking liquor in the prohibition States; they still persist in drinking it, but we hate the sight of anybody drinking liquor, and we want you to help us to prevent them from drinking it." If they had the power they would strike it right from the hands of those people, in their intolerance.

There are more people ruined by other things than liquor. Every time we read of a crime in the paper there is generally a woman in the case. We read about men going wrong and graft. It is not because of drink. Yet, according to the prohibitionists, it is all because of whisky. It is sometimes said that money is the root of all evil. It is just as logical to say that money is the cause of all evil as it is to say that the drinking of liquor or wines or beer is the cause of all evil. That is the logic of their side.

STATEMENT OF MR. GUSTAVUS A. KORB.

Mr. KORB. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I represent the Independent Citizens' Union of Maryland. We are not a campaign body, but we are a regularly incorporated body under the laws of the State of Maryland. Connected with this organization are 68 societies from Baltimore City and the neighboring counties. We have a membership of between 25,000 and 30,000, and all of them are legal voters of the State of Maryland. I do not believe there is one in that entire number who is in favor of this bill. I was requested to come here and speak before this committee, that this committee might not report this bill favorably.

The argument that was advanced by one of the speakers very seriously impressed me. Mr. Smith said that he wanted to be left alone to enforce the laws of Iowa. Gentlemen, that is what we want. We want to be left alone to enforce our own laws. If Iowa is not able to enforce its own laws it ought to repeal them. I was out there about sixteen years ago, and at that time there was a prohibition law on the statue books of the State, supposed to be enforced in the entire State.

From the arguments I heard here to-day I find that the State is gradually swinging the other way; that they are permitting liquor to be sold at some places in the State. Their own citizens, it seems, are going against the law; and, gentlemen, if this bill that has been proposed becomes a law, what will be the result of it? You are going to make the citizens of this country uphold that law that it seems the citizens of Iowa themselves do not want. They are going to have their beer and liquor, and you may pass laws as much as you please and you won't prevent them from getting it. You are simply wasting your time by enacting such laws as this.

We have in our own State of Maryland a law that is supposed to be very stringent as to selling liquor on Sunday, and yet I know that there is plenty of beer and whisky sold on Sunday in Baltimore; I know that a number of saloons do more business on Sunday than on any other day in the week. Although policemen go around in citizens' clothes and try to prevent that sort of thing, and make raids on saloons that sell liquor on Sunday, still it does not stop it. You can not stop it that way. And so, if you pass this law you will create that much more disrespect for law, because the people will violate it. They think you are robbing them of their personal rights; but they will violate the law, and they will get what they want to drink in spite of all the laws you may make. You will simply make them go about it in a little more secret way. You will create a disrespect for law by imposing upon people laws that they will not obey, and laws which will be violated.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your attention.

The CHAIRMAN. We have been sitting here all day listening to these speeches, and if there are any others who wish to speak they can have their remarks printed in the record.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. I want to call your attention to the fact, Mr. Chairman, that there are fifteen members of Congress that have asked to be heard on this bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I know there are.

Mr. HEXAMER. And there are a few more speakers here who wish to be heard. It is impossible to prepare legal arguments at a moment's notice, you understand, Mr. Chairman. We have piles of letters from people that want to be heard here. As Judge Bode and Mr. Wildermuth have shown us, there are new standpoints from which to argue this question. I would therefore request that you give us a chance.

The CHAIRMAN. I could not anticipate what the pleasure of the committee will be on that question. We can not act on that now. Mr. HEXANER. We only pray that this be put on record as the National German American Alliance.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I have received this afternoon the names of a good many Members of Congress and several United States Senators who insist upon being heard. I have not sent for them, because I knew you gentlemen were here, and I thought as many of you have come from a distance it would only be fair to hear you to-day.

Mr. NICHOLSON. May I be allowed to make a statement in connection with this request?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. NICHOLSON. I would say that if the hearings were to be continued, if we felt that there was any necessity for the enlightenment of the committee on points not fully covered or upon points that they might want information upon, we could bring a host of people here who would be only too glad to come attorneys and others—and I am sure they would speak to the merits of the bill. It had been our understanding, however, that there was an agreement on the part of the committee, perhaps, to take final action to-morrow, and with that idea we only put forward a few of our speakers to-day, trying to round up our argument from our standpoint. I would like to go on record as not being in favor of any further arguments or statements.

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSEPH E. ADAMS, OF WILMINGTON, DEL.

Mr. ADAMS. Mr. Chairman, I represent the Wilmington branch of the German-American Alliance, and on behalf of said branch I want to enter a protest against the passage of this proposed measure. In Wilmington we have a population of about 18,000 Germans, that many in Wilmington alone, and there are quite a number in the State. In their behalf I protest against this bill, and I am sure that I am authorized to say for them that if it were put to a test not only the German-Americans, but the population of Wilmington and Delaware generally would be against it-there would be an overwhelming majority against the bill.

STATEMENT OF MR. ADOLPH TIMM.

Mr. TIMм. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, we have quite a number of letters from our western branches who would like to be here to protest against this Hepburn-Dolliver bill. I am secretary of the National German-American Alliance, and I want to enter my protest in that capacity against the bill. (Adjourned.)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Friday, March 16, 1906.

The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. John J. Jenkins in the chair.

The CHAIRMAN. We continue this morning the hearings on the Hepburn-Dolliver bill and the other bills relating to that subject. STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BARTHOLDT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bartholdt, which bill are you going to speak with reference to? There are three bills.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. I am going to speak to the Hepburn-Dolliver bill, Mr. Chairman.

Permit me to say at the outset that what I am going to submit is inerely a skeleton of the argument that might be made on the pending bill.

During the hearings in this and the last Congress and I have attended all of them-it became evident to me that the members of this committee are not particularly anxious to hear arguments other than on the legal aspects of the case or on questions touching the constitutionality of the bill. This is quite natural, perhaps, in view of the fact that the committee consists exclusively of jurists. And yet to my mind the material questions involved here far outweigh the mere technical ones. It is important, of course, whether the bill under consideration can properly be fitted into the framework of our national laws and whether it is constitutional in the light of the decisions of the Supreme Court on this subject, for, I am sure, if the majority of this committee believed the measure to be unconstitu

tional that would settle it, and there would be no need of any further argument.

I will go even further and say if only a reasonable doubt existed on the constitutional question the judiciary committee could not be induced to act favorably on a measure surrounded by such doubt. Any other committee of the House, from entirely innocent motives, might be prompted to report a bill of doubtful constitutionality, but the great Committee on the Judiciary, I am sure, would never stoop to such actions, because its members are too jealous of their reputation as constitutional lawyers, a reputation to which they usually owe their appointment to this committee. Moreover, we are all under oath to uphold the Constitution, and while lay members of Congress might innocently, as I said, do violence to it by their votes, no member of the judiciary committee could ever be found in that class. If anywhere in our great country the Constitution is safe I believe it to be safe in this sacred circle, the home of its friends.

I am not a practicing lawyer, but I have read law sufficiently to convince me that this bill is clearly unconstitutional. I am satisfied that an attempt to single out a special article of commerce and to decree that in the case of the article thus singled out the operation of the interstate-commerce law shall be interrupted at the boundary line and give way to the police power of a State so that that article can not be delivered into the hands of the consignee, amounts to a denial of the rights guaranteed by the interstate commerce of the Constitution.

But this is not the question I came here to argue. For the sake of argument let us assume the bill to be constitutional. Then instead of its being a question whether it is legal or whether it is constitutional, it becomes a question whether it is just and expedient, in one word whether it is right. It is admitted, I believe, that there are things which may be perfectly legal and constitutional and yet are morally and materially wrong. In other words, from the viewpoint of eternal right our consciences may prompt us to condemn what no law forbids, and that proves that there are considerations higher than those prompted by the mere technicalities and constitutions.

Some weeks ago the Hon. Joseph Cannon, our great Speaker, said in the course of an address at Philadelphia-I merely give the substance of his remarks that in former years the great danger in our country consisted in the possibility of the concentration of too great power in the National Government. The danger to-day was the very reverse, namely, that the people of the several States were prone to neglect the exercise of the powers which they have under their State constitutions, and prefer to appeal to Congress on all possible and impossible occasions, asking the national legislature to do for them what their own legislatures were fully competent to accomplish.

Mr. HENRY. That argument might apply to the pure-food law and the quarantine bill that has been reported.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. As far as the quarantine bill, where a question of national health is involved, I do believe in the principle of putting that in the hands of the Federal Government.

Mr. PALMER. The employers' liability bill and the antiinjunction bill also.

Mr. HENRY. Yes; it might be extended a little further.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. Is not the legislation sought by the pending bill exactly a case in point? According to many decisions of the Supreme Court the liquor traffic is completely subject to the police power of a State, and there can be no doubt but what it could be completely suppressed by that power.

The partial or complete failure of prohibition States to suppress it is admitted, but there can be but two reasons for such failure. Either the State is not exhausting its powers to that end, or the natural human desire for the consumption of liquor can not be suppressed-that is, its satisfaction prevented by law. In either case there is not the shadow of an excuse for interference by Congress. In the first instance, if a State can not furnish to this committee or to Congress complete proof of its inability to suppress the traffic referred to and of its entire good faith as to the exercise to the utmost limit of its own powers to that end, then, I claim, it has no moral right to invoke the power of Congress.

And if, on the other hand, practical experience has demonstrated all honest attempts at suppression to have been futile, simply because of the inefficacy of all law in the matter of preventing people from obtaining what they desire, then I say it is absolutely useless to provide additional legal machinery for that purpose, because to do so would have no other effect than to undermine, aye, destroy, the authority and dignity of national law in the eyes of the people. During the many hours I have listened here I have not heard a single argument on the other side which tended in any way to refute or break down the inexorableness of this situation.

What are the facts? Take the case of Iowa. Have the authorities of that State made every effort to suppress the liquor traffic? Have they exhausted their powers to do so? Not by any means. On the contrary the legislature of that State has passed a law-the so-called mulet law-which permits the traffic in counties desiring it under a system of fines which the dealers have to pay. In other words, the State itself legalizes the traffic in certain localities, and yet it comes here and asks Congress to aid it in the enforcement of its prohibitory law. This is the reason why I interrupted Judge Smith the other day when he argued here in favor of the passage of this bill, with the suggestion that he had not come with clean hands, figuratively speaking, of course.

If he had been able to show that his State was under a prohibitory law which was being strictly enforced in all parts, and that in spite of all honest efforts of the State authorities it was impossible to stamp out the traffic because of the importations of liquor from other States, then he might have a standing in court, or rather before this committee, but as a matter of fact there are breweries and distilleries running wide open in his State. Consequently, I say the continuance of the traffic there is certainly not due to a lack of national legislation, but to the operation of its own laws or their nonenforcement, whatever the case may be. Even if the Hepburn bill would ever be enacted into law, which under the circumstances I have just described would surely be an absurd and unwarranted undertaking, it would not help Iowa. And why not? Simply because it would be the easiest thing in the world to supply the dry counties from within its own boundary lines.