It’s left a trail of graft and slime,

It don’t prohibit worth a dime,

It’s filled our land with vice and crime,

Nevertheless, we’re for it.^[17]

But the cat was out of the bag.  The wild claims of the prohibi-tionists—unquestioned in the past—were now confronted with official facts and figures that left no doubt the “the Noble Experiment” had been a disaster. 

The drys had one last ace in the hole.  Prohibition wasn’t just a law, it was imbedded in the Constitution.  Most authorities thought it would be impossible to reverse the process.  No amendment had ever been repealed.  It takes two-thirds of both Houses and three-fourths of the States. Senator Morris Sheppard, the wily old Texan who helped install Prohibition, said “There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”^[18]  But with the Crash of 1929, the country’s attention had shifted from morality to survival, and when Franklin Roosevelt swept into office in 1932, it was with the active help of former Republicans Pauline Sabin and Henry Joy. Less than a month after the Democratic landslide, the hummingbird took off for Mars.

Back in the closing days of 1919 just before Prohibition became law, the bar at the Yale Club, with uncanny foresight, had laid in a 14-year supply of liquor.  On December 5, 1933, when Utah became the 36th State to ratify repeal, the prescient Yalies had good reason to clink their glasses. They had timed it almost to the bottle.^[19]

Harry J. Anslinger had given it his all.  A muscular, bull-necked, former railroad cop who could handle himself on any terrain,