The American Issue

Same Old Plots at the Legislature

The present situation in the Illinois Legislature shows plainly that the fight for the maintenance of prohibition is by no means over. Owing to the shifting of population in some of the large centers and the fact that two dry members have died since the Illinois Legislature convened, the drys today lack a majority in the House of Representatives.

Realizing the situation in the Legislature, the wets have not been slow to act and show their real purpose, which is to block prohibition and restore the saloon.

1. House Bill No. 3. Repealing the Illinois Prohibition Act.
2. House Bill No. 94. By this a fiasco trial in a Federal Court imposing a nominal fine or even resulting in acquittal, would prevent the state proceeding against a bootlegger however flagrant his offense might be. By this means, a court prevents instead of promoting justice.
3. House Bill No. 363. Would deprive police officers of rights which they have had from time immemorial. This measure, in order to protect the moonshiner and bootlegger, would make it practically impossible for officers to catch criminals at all.
4. House Resolution No. 16. Requesting Congress to call a National Constitutional Convention for the purpose of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment.

Fortunately we have a good dry majority in the Senate, but probably some of these intolerable measures can be blocked in the House. We suggest, therefore, to our friends, that you let your Senators and Representatives hear from you at once in regard to these nefarious bills.

Please tell them that you are relying on them to block these and other wet measures. Some of them will be tempted, some threatened, in the hope that they will let these measures slip through. Encourage them to do all in their power to prevent it. The situation is critical.

The Anti-Saloon League is working hard at its legislative task in exposing these measures and endeavoring to see that they are defeated.

Please help in the way indicated. Thank you.

The bootlegger is on a par with the thief and the bank robber. He is a law breaker and so is his patron who conspires with him to violate the law.
Wets Active in Fifty-Fifth General Assembly

The Legal Department of the Anti-Saloon League keeps constant watch on all measures introduced in the Legislature. Only a few wet bills are a direct attack on prohibition and its enforcement. Most wet measures are disguised in the form of innocent-looking amendments to the Criminal Code, to the Cities and Villages Act, or to some other general law.

There have been many such measures already introduced in the present Legislature, all of which have been carefully analyzed by the League to show their real effect, and this ammunition is in turn placed in the hands of dry leaders to be used in fighting these bills.

The wets are now making in the state of Illinois one of the hardest and most carefully and shrewdly planned fights they have ever made in the history of the cause anywhere.