GRAND OLD PROSPERITY

Yesterday the newspapers spread themselves with good news. Prosperity, like the elections, is just around the cornor, and Mr. Hoover's commission has a job up its sleeve for every one of the 3,500,000 men now out of work. After a year of repeated stock market raids, wheat milles and bread lines, the specte of a Democratic Congress stalks through the land hand in glove with that greater bugaboo, Prohibition reform.

Should anyone scent something fishy about this sudden outburst of business optimism in the land of the cod where the Republican party fought its primary on the prohibition issue let him turn to the editorial page of the party journals in Boston. Prohibition is no longer the great question in the Massachusetts elections, these papers announce, and furthermore they caution that to vote a Democratic ticket on the Prohibition issue is to close the door in the face of on-coming good times.

Evidently the Prohibition broil is getting too hot for the politicians and they figure it better to jump out of the frying pan into the fire of hard times. The full dinner pail is accordingly held forth to tempt the working man away from the overflowing beer bucket.

Aside from the presumption of making cheap talk about prosperity at a time when unemployment is causing acute suffering, the Massachusetts Republicans lose sight of their public duty when in a Walpole-like fashion they refuse to go to the polls on a straightforward platform. Prohibition is the issue in this election and it is an issue of grave importance for the future welfare of the Commonwealth. For the Republican press to becloud that issue with nonsense about a Democratic depression is to affirm their belief in the doctrine that it is easy to fool enough of the people at election time.