glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  Many of these lawmakers had known for years that prohibition was unenforceable, but under the thumb of the Anti-Saloon League, they dared not open their mouths.  The League had helped elect many in this chamber, and they were still convinced the League spoke for the woman voter.  Mrs. Sabin put the lie to that myth and the legislators began to breath again.

In the campaign of 1928, Herbert Hoover’s ambiguous platform gave hope to both wets and drys, but once in office the new president came down heavily on the side of Prohibition.  Partly to placate the offended wets, he named a panel of experts to study the problem under the guidance of former Attorney General George Wickersham. It was clear from the outset that Hoover expected the Wickersham Commission to support the law, and when the report came out in January of 1931, it looked at first glance like a triumph for the drys. On closer reading, however, it turned out only one of the eleven members actually believed Prohibition had a chance.  The statements of the other ten ranged from skepticism to outright demand for repeal. More important, the body of the report was loaded with scientific data and expert testimony detailing the devastation—the overwhelming flow of cash, the corruption, the gunplay, the judicial paralysis, the bursting prisons—and the unstoppable, ever-flowing tide of booze.  “As an account of what had gone wrong and why, the whole report has not been surpassed,”says historian Sean Dennis Cashman ^[16]  With these facts on record, the politically correct conclusions at the end of the report made the administration look ridiculous. This ditty from the New York World summed it up.

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.

We like it.