DEAN POUND VOTES FOR PROHIBITION MODERATED FORM

In the report of the Wickrsham Commission for the investigation of law enforcement, which was laid before President Hoover yesterday. Professor Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, and Miss Ada L. Comstock, were of the common opinion that the present saws enforcing prohibition should be moderated.

Although the majority of the 11 commissioners who drew up the report agreed with Dean Pound in his move for moderation, nevertheless the two who advocated repeal, the two in favor of further trial, and the three champions (including Chairman G. W. Wickersham) of stricter enforcement, succeeded in forcing a compromise which advocated essentially no change whatever.

The statement of Dean Pound, which was presented to President Hoover, is as follows:

Dean Pound's Statement

"As I interpret the evidence before us, it established certain definite economic and social gains following national prohibition. But it established quite as clearly that these gains have come from closing saloons rather than from the more ambitious program of complete and immediate universal total abstinence to be enforced concurrently by nation and state.

"While making enforcement as effective as we may.... We should be at work to enable the fundamental difficulties to be reached. This it seems clear, can only be done by a revision of the amendment... by so redrawing the amendment as, on the one hand, to preserve federal control and a check upon bringing back of the saloon anywhere, and, on the other hand, to allow of an effective control adapted to local conditions in places where, as things are, at least, it is futile to seek a nationally enforced general abstinence.

"Federal control of what had become a nation-wide traffic and abolition of the saloon are great steps forward which should be maintained... Mr. Anderson has proposed a well-thought-out plan, based on study of systems of liquor control and their operation. His plan deserves careful consideration as the best and most complete plan which has been brought to our attention. This or some like plan for adapting national control to local conditions may well be the next forward step."