Newton D. Baker to Stanley H. Mullen

Title

Newton D. Baker to Stanley H. Mullen

Creator

Baker, Newton Diehl, 1871-1937

Identifier

WWP16624

Date

1928 October 6

Source

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

Language

English

Text

COPY

My dear Mr. Mullen:

 have received your letter of October 5.

I am not, and have never been, a prohibitionist. I thought the Eighteenth Amendment wrong at the time it was passed and still think it wrong. My reasons for this are two. In the first place, I do not believe the Constitution of the United States is the place to legislate. That document ought to declare great principles and donate power to Congress, as the legislative branch, leaving the power flexible so that legislation under it could be progressively responsive to an enlightening public opinion. In the second place, the studies of a lifetime have convinced me that while there may be some ethical gains from legislation, the major ethical gains of life are from self-discipline, and I, therefore, have been deeply grieved to see the habit of temperance, which was growing among us in response to our increased intellectual and moral growth, cast to the winds in an attempt to secure by arbitrary prohibition what at best is reluctant and resentful obedience to a law.

Governor Smith’s position, as he stated it with candor, is that he does not believe that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, as they now are, can be enforced. Many very excellent and temperate people not only agree with this, but grieve at the consequences of present enforcement efforts. Should Governor Smith be elected President and cause a candid re-examination of our present liquor situation, my hope is that a more rational approach to this great problem can be devised. Whether or not it would take the exact form which Governor Smith professes as his judgement about it, I do not know, but certainly something must be done to relieve us of the present tragic condition, in which the most self-respecting, educated and cultured part of our community is in open rebellion against a law of the United States, and is lending its countenance by trafficing with bootleggers, to the building up of a new class of criminals and to a growing anarchy of disregard of and disrespect for all law.

In the meantime, it is to be observed that Governor Smith has said quite frankly that should he be elected President of the United States, he would do his best to enforce both the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act so long as they remain a part of the law of the country. Nobody who knows Governor Smith can doubt that he means this and that he will do it.

I note your observation about Governor Smith’s being supported by Tammany. Frankly, I am wholly unimpressed by that argument. Mr. Hoover’s nomination was brought about by Mr. Vare of Philadelphia. Mr. Vare is the head of the most successfully corrupt political machine in America, built up by a succession of bosses beginning with Simon Cameron and running in succession through Don Cameron, Matthew Quay, Boice Penrose, and finally Vare, who together have held the State of Pennsylvania through notorious, shameless frauds in political bondage since 1870. Mr. Hoover’s nomination was further contributed to by the so-called colored delegation from the South, and by the political machines of Indiana and Illinois, in the former of which states a Republican Governor has recently returned from the penitentiary and another was tried for grave public offenses. In the latter of those states, a Republican governor was saved from criminal penalties by a plea of Statue of Limitations and required by civil proceedings to return vast sums to the public treasury which he had illegally abstracted therefrom, while the United States Senator designate and elect was rejected by the Senate for gross election frauds. Mr. Hoover is the candidate of the party which elected President Harding during whose administration the Secretary of the Interior fraudulently and corruptly despoiled the public domain; the Attorney General was tried for complicity in fraudulent transactions; the Alien Property Custodian was similarly tried; and other members of the administration high in place were openly disgraced for fraud and dishonesty. Mr. Hoover was himself a member of that administration and sat by without protest of any public sort while these very dreadful things were going on, and the party, whose nominee, he now is, accepted through Mr. Will Hays from Mr. Sinclair great sums of money, which were the fruits of his fraud upon the people of the United States, to pay the debts of the National Committee, with which Committee Mr. Hoover is now, of course, actively associated and working.

I can say these things, not harshly, but in the hope that I can bring to a candid mind like yours some sense of the amazement I feel that any partisan of Mr. Hoover’s should think it possible to refer to Tammany as a limitation upon Governor Smith’s eligibility, particularly when it is futher recalled that during Governor Smith’s four terms as the chief executive of the great Empire State of this nation, no breath of accusation has ever been raised against his personal entegrity or the stern uprightness which he has required his administration to govern and care for the financial interests of the State of New York.

I hope from what I have said that you will exonerate me from blind adhesion to merely partisan political affiliations. Governor Smith has demonstrated a great humanitarian conscience. People in New York like Root and Hughes, representing the Republican Party; social workers, who spend their lives with the poor, bankers; merchants and philanthropists all concur in testifying alike to his humanity and his vision. Perhaps no man within our lifetime has by common consent better understood the processes of government or more genuinely sympathized with the lot of the common man in our great Republic. In the light of these truths, I can not feel that I need any excuse for believing that he would make a great President.

Cordially yours,

Newton D. Baker

Original Format

Letter

To

Mullen, Stanley H.

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/D04001.pdf

Citation

Baker, Newton Diehl, 1871-1937, “Newton D. Baker to Stanley H. Mullen,” 1928 October 6, WWP16624, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.