constantly point to the big majority in Congress, and the promptness
and almost unanimity of the approval by the Legislatures, as proof of
an overwhelming preponderance of public sentiment in favor of the
Amendment. It is proof of no such thing. To begin with, nothing is
more notorious than the fact that a large proportion of the members of
Congress and State Legislatures who voted for the Prohibition
Amendment were not themselves in favor of it. Many of them openly
declared that they were voting not according to their own judgment but
in deference to the desire of their constituents. But there is not the
slightest reason to believe that one out of twenty of those gentlemen
made any effort to ascertain the desire of a majority of their
constituents; nor, for that matter, that they would have followed that
desire if they had known what it was. What they were really concerned
about was to get the support, or avoid the enmity, of those who held,
or were supposed to hold, the balance of power. For that purpose a
determined and highly organized body of moderate dimensions may
outweigh a body ten times as numerous and ten times as representative
of the community. The Anti-Saloon League was the power of which
Congressmen and Legislaturemen alike stood in fear. Never in our
political history has there been such an example of consummately
organized, astutely managed, and unremittingly maintained
intimidation; and accordingly never in our history has a measure of
such revolutionary character and of such profound importance as the
Eighteenth Amendment been put through with anything like such
smoothness and celerity. The intimidation exercised by the AntiSaloon
League was potent in a degree far beyond the numerical strength of the
League and its adherents, not only because of the effective and
systematic use of its black-listing methods, but also for another
reason. Weak-kneed Congressmen and Legislaturemen succumbed not only
to fear of the ballots which the League controlled but also to fear of