Douglas Daily Dispatch

PROHIBITION IS
POPULAR, SAYS
REV. C. STELZLE

ATLANTIC CITY, N. J., Oct. 5 (AP)—Efforts to learn what America really thinks about prohibition indicate a strong sentiment in favor of the eighteenth amendment and the Volstead act, Rev. Charles Stelzle, president of the church advertising department of the International Advertising association, declared today.

He reported the results of a nationwide study which he has been conducting during the past few months to a conference of 75 leaders in sociological and business fields called to consider plans for a "militant campaign for prohibition enforcement."

He said he obtained a mass of opinion from newspaper editors, superintendents of high schools, chiefs of police, health officers, employers of labor, labor union officials and clergymen of nearly 1,000 cities throughout the country.

Of about 300 representative newspaper editors in as many cities, he said, 73 per cent were in favor of the eighteenth amendment and 61 per cent favored the Volstead act. "A comparatively small number of editors are altogether opposed to prohibition," he asserted. Most of those who do not approve of it outright favor some kind of modification."

Mr. Stelzle said it was absolutely impossible to obtain accurate figures as to whether there is as much drinking today as there was prior to the eighteenth amendment, but pointed to insurance figures showing a decrease in the percentage of deaths from alcoholism as an indication.

While he found the attitude of organized labor, on the whole, "extremely cynical," he said that officers of labor unions rarely express their real convictions concerning prohibition, fearing they may jeopardize their jobs.