Christmas Present

Testimony by Lincoln C. Andrews, stern little nemesis of the bootleggers, accompanied the bill reported to the House last week by the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Andrews told what Christmas present he wanted to give the country. He proposed a triple-barrelled attack on real beer and hard liquor which would cost only three millions more than the 28 million dollar appropriation already scheduled. Three new headquarters squads would be formed: 1) 51 well-paid "undercover" agents to work under the 24 district administrators gathering evidence on lax city and state officials that will make it too expensive for them to continue their connivances and conspiracies; 2) a highly mobile squad of 88 to nose out and prevent diversion of industrial alcohol for synthetic whiskies and gins; 3) 88 other sleuths to work with the American Railway Association in matching wits with shippers of beer who now, it seems, can baffle the shrewdest freight-masters by disguising their bubblesome liquid as lumber, cement, merchandise.

"I may be a ridiculous optimist," Mr. Andrews admitted but . . . given the bill ... I expect to see real beer off the market before Christmas. . . . Then you will see home-brewing spring up."

Representative La Guardia, New York's popular Italian member, spent the week trying to embarrass Mr. Andrews by "making beer with a kick" out of bottled goods purchased at the corner drug stores. The ingredients used were near-beer and a 3.76% malt tonic which Mr. Andrews had passed on last month as a legal manufacture (TIME, Apr. 12).

Mr. La Guardia's gestures and a series of "nagging" letters from various reformers moved Mr. Andrews to write a letter to President Ella A. Boole of the W. C. T. U. scouting the drugstore concoction as unpalatable and frankly begging "people"--i. e. the W. C. T. U. and the Anti-Saloon League--to "quit making so much disturbance about little matters and assist the government in accomplishing some big matters."