In New York

The adherents of aridity in the state with the largest population last week fell to quarreling among themselves over the best way to prevent the re-election of Wet Senator James W. Wadsworth. A small but earnest group of old-time reformers had gathered in a Methodist office building in Manhattan as the revived Prohibition Party to nominate one Franklin W. Cristman, banker-lawyer, as well as candidates for state offices (TIME, June 21). Other Drys, notably the local branch of the Anti-Saloon League, were vexed. They had already planned the gesture of nominating Mr. Cristman by securing 500,000 citizens' signatures (instead of the paltry 12,000 needed). It took a loud, emphatic speech by a W. C. T. U. Vice-President to convince the oldtime Prohibitionists that as a matter of "practical politics," Mr. Cristman must be allowed to run as an independent Republican.

Senator Wadsworth's reply to Mr. Cristman's candidacy had been a public endorsement of the Quebec liquor system for adoption by New York. He was hoping that his party chiefs would insert a Wet plank in their platform, whence he might hope to enlist Democratic votes. But the party chiefs last week decided to have no platform; to let their various candidates conduct their own compaigns on their own issues and planks as best they might. This would leave Senator Wadsworth freer than ever in his effort to outsell the Democratic candidate with Wet promises, but it indicated the degree of Dryness that he would have to combat in his own party. It indicated, not that the Drys had the balance of power in New York, but that the seizure thereof by Wets was not as complete as it had seemed a fortnight ago before Wadsworth's chiefs backed water.