What Prohibition Has Done to America
by Fabian Franklin
Copyright 1922, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York.
Table of Contents
Chapter I - Perverting the Constitution
Chapter II - Creating a Nation of Lawbreakers
Chapter III - Destroying Our Federal System
Chapter IV - How the Amendment Was Put Through
Chapter V - The Law Makers and the Law
Chapter VI - The Law Enforcers and the Law
Chapter VII - Nature of the Prohibitionist Tyranny
Chapter VIII - One-Half of One Percent
Chapter IX - Prohibition and Liberty
Chapter X - Prohibition and Socialism
Chapter XI - Is There Any Way Out?
CHAPTER I
PERVERTING THE CONSTITUTION
THE object of a Constitution like that of the United States is to establishcertain fundamentals of government in such a way that they cannot be alteredor destroyed by the mere will of a majority of the people, or by the ordinaryprocesses of legislation. The framers of the Constitution saw the necessityof making a distinction between these fundamentals and the ordinary subjectsof law-making, and accordingly they, and the people who gave their approvalto the Constitution, deliberately arrogated to themselves the power toshackle future majorities in regard to the essentials of the system ofgovernment which they brought into being. They did this with a clear consciousnessof the object which they had in view--the stability of the new governmentand the protection of certain fundamental rights and liberties. But theydid not for a moment entertain the idea of imposing upon future generations,through the extraordinary sanctions of the Constitution, their views uponany special subject of ordinary legislation. Such a proceeding would haveseemed to them far more monstrous, and far less excusable, than that tyrannyof George III and his Parliament which had given rise to the American Revolution.
Until the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, the Constitution of theUnited States retained the character which properly belongs to the organiclaw of a great Federal Republic. The matters with which it dealt were ofthree kinds, and three only--the division of powers as between the Federaland the State governments, the structure of the Federal government itself,and the safeguarding of the fundamental rights of American citizens. Thesewere things that it was felt essential to remove from the vicissitudesattendant upon the temper of the majority at given time. There was notto be any doubt from year to year as to the limits of Federal power onthe one hand and State power on the other; nor as to the structure of theFederal government and the respective functions of the legislative, executive,and judicial departments of that government; nor as to the