Free 1920 by Eric Burns Page A

more attentive congregation Sunday morning, more likely to take the sermon to heart, more likely to follow the paths of purity, more likely to drop coins into the collection basket. To the robber barons—Carnegie, Henry Frick, Henry Ford, Pierre du Pont, Gustavus Swift, John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr., and others—the ASL suggested that a sober workforce would be less likely to slow up production by getting body parts caught in machinery. Such an impression did this point make on the younger Rockefeller, it is said, that he “actually purchased, and then razed, several breweries and distilleries, the rubble a much-appreciated present for Wayne Wheeler.”
    And although Wheeler himself had never had any previous experience in government and never held any office, either elective or appointed, theLeague under his tutelage was masterful at back-room political maneuvering. He proudly explained his method.
    I do it the way the [political] bosses do it, with minorities. There are some anti-saloon votes in every community. I and other speakers increase the number and passion of them. I list and bind them to vote as I bid. I say, “We’ll all vote against the men in office who won’t support our bills. We’ll vote for candidates who will promise to. They’ll break their promise. Sure. Next time we’ll break them.” And we can. We did. Our swinging, solid minorities, no matter how small, counted.
    So effective did Wheeler turn out to be as a political manipulator that, according to biographer Justin Steuart, there was a point at which he
    controlled six Congresses, dictated to two Presidents of the United States, directed legislation for the most important elective state and federal offices, held the balance of power in both Republican and Democratic parties, distributed more patronage than any dozen other men, supervised a federal bureau from the outside without official authority, and was recognized by friend and foe alike as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States.
    The hyperbole seems to leap off the page. But it is not as great as one might think; nor is it exaggeration to state, as Steuart does, that a number of political figures at the federal, state, and local levels “served under” Wheeler at various times. His power could be overstated, but it was real and it made a difference.
    In fact, only once during the reign of the Anti-Saloon League did the trousered locomotive overreach himself. It happened when he approached the White House, only to have President Wilson refuse the ASL’s plea “demanding,” as I wrote in
Spirits
, “that a worldwide prohibition of alcoholic beverages be written into the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson did not agree. He did not even respond, nor discuss the matter with hisadvisers. He figured he had enough problems with the postwar world as it was.
    Wayne Wheeler was not surprised. He had already suspected Wilson of cowardice.
    THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE’S SUCCESS WAS, although unrecognized by most historians, one of the most significant and dismal episodes in all of American history. Political bosses had controlled their “swinging, solid minorities” long before Wheeler came along; and representatives of industries like steel and railroads had slipped wads of cash into the pockets of many a legislator. But these men were less an organized group than a series of powerful individuals paying for favors at different times for different reasons.
    It was Wayne Wheeler whose efforts, it may be said, institutionalized the beginning of the end of the republic that the Founding Fathers had imagined. The point is arguable, but a strong case can be made for viewing the Anti-Saloon League as the death knell for majority rule in the United States, the end of the sovereignty of the people and the transfer of political power to passionately committed special-interest groups who began to sow both money and