who is a States rights believer, that question. He thinks it probably belongs to the States and not the Federal Government.

Mr. WILSON. If all the States would do it, certainly the end result would be the same.

Mr. DOLLINGER. Why don't you try that first before you come to us? Mr. WILSON. When you are dealing with interstate matters, it seems to me that Congress is the body with jurisdiction.

Mr. DOLLINGER. You can't blow hot and cold. I am not giving you an opinion, but I think if people are interested in States rights, they should proceed on that theory and not bounce back and forth and come to the Federal Government in some instances, and back to the States in some instances. You can't do it both ways. You have to be consistent down the line.

Mr. WILSON. I think that is correct.

Chairman PRIEST. Are there further questions?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Wilson, most of the witnesses who have testified here this morning have tended to leave the impression that liquor is advertised by radio, television, newspapers, and magazines. In your own statement in the paragraph which I believe you deleted, you quoted Mr. Howard Jones, executive secretary of the Distilled Spirits Institute as having said that members of that institute had voluntarily accepted a code containing a number of provisions of public interest, one of which was a ban on radio advertising.

That, of course, is with respect to hard liquors. Which do you consider to be the greatest evil, the advertising of hard liquors and beer in newspapers, or the advertising of beer alone on television and radio? Or do you make a distinction between beer and light wines, which are considered by many not to be in the category of intoxicating beverages if taken in moderation? Do you make a distinction between hard liquors and these so-called other beverages?

Mr. WILSON. No. As you point out, the present problem with respect to radio and television is the beer and wine category rather than the distilled spirits. As to which is the more effective mode of communication, being in the magazine business perhaps I should not say that television is the better medium for advertising. However, it is acceptable to more people, whereas either newspapers or magazines have a circulation which is controlled to a greater extent than either television or radio.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I don't believe you understood my question. My question was this: Which do you consider to be the greatest evil, the advertising of beer and light wines on radio and television, or the advertising of liquor in newspapers and magazines?

Mr. WILSON. I think it would be pretty much of a tossup. In your newspaper advertising of hard liquors, you are presumably reaching primarily an adult audience. Whereas with the television and radio, although it is a less potent product, you are reaching a more vulnerable audience.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Then you don't make a distinction between the evil inherent in the consumption of hard liquor and the evil in the consumption of beer and light wines?

Mr. WILSON. Not in a qualitative analysis. There would be a difference as far as the quantitative analysis would be concerned.

Mr. WILLIAMS. In the State of Mississippi, we have retained a prohibition law. We do not permit even the possession of hard liquor.

However, in the State of Mississippi, we have legalized the sale of beer. Granted that both constitute a common problem to a degree, why should that distinction be made? You referred to State laws in that regard.

Mr. WILSON. I think it would be on the same basis upon which the taxation is judged, that is, the alcoholic content. Congress, for example, would feel freer to tax more heavy beverages with a greater alcoholic content than with a lesser. So apparently State legislatures look at the problem in the same way. From our standpoint I think there are inherent problems in both beer and hard liquor.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I am not an authority on the subject, but I have been told-and I think with some authority that there is a great deal of food value in beer. I do know that I have seen cases where beer was prescribed by doctors because of its food value. Wouldn't that possibly place the two in different categories?

Mr. WILSON. There will be medical testimony later on at this hearing which should I think deal with that point.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Isn't your point this, as much as anything else? There is a distinction between abstinence and temperance. Is there any moral difference in your opinion between the terms abstinence and temperance?

Mr. WILSON. I would not want to say, for example, that to be a Christian one had to be a total abstainer. I think possibly-I don't think possibly, I am certain-there are many people who are moral people and who are Christians and who are faithful followers of other faiths who would interpret temperance to be something other than abstinence.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I have no other questions.

Chairman PRIEST. I take it you are not a lawyer?

Mr. WILSON. No.

Chairman PRIEST. Since this question has been raised, however, in terms of the law, I think it is fair that the record should show that only recently a Federal Court of Appeals in a case where a certiorari was denied by the United States Supreme Court, apparently held quite clearly that since Congress by the enactment of the Federal Communications Act had entered into this whole field, the State of Pennsylvania was excluded when they attempted some advance censorship of a television or radio program, one or the other. So if there is an extraneous issue in the whole problem, it seems to me very clear that it is whether or not the States can constitutionally act now in terms of existing Federal law. In other words, it seems to me the problem of constitutionality rests squarely in the laps of this committee, and not in the legislatures of the several States.

I say that with a clear understanding that I am not at all satisfied as yet as to the constitutional status of this very difficult problem. I don't consider it a collateral issue. I think it is a direct and important issue. I don't thing the answer lies in whether one or another or half a dozen of the 48 State legislatures have seen fit to act.

I can well understand that under that decision and under any common sense doctrine that a member of a State legislature might very well say, it is essential for us to act even if we might think it is unconstitutional, because after all, the radio and television stations come into our States. The newspapers and the magazines are delivered in

interstate commerce into our State. In other words, it comes right back to the question, as I see it, on what this committee feels is constitutional in terms of the suggestions made in this bill. I don't ask you to comment on it. I simply think that in view of the fact that that issue has been raised some reply should be made at this stage. Mr. WILSON. I appreciate your comment.

Chairman PRIEST. Mr. Macdonald.

Mr. MACDONALD. Mr. Wilson, does your organization or do you have access to figures throughout the 48 States governing the sale of liquor and malt beverages?

Mr. WILSON. I don't have them at hand. We should have access to them, I think.

Mr. MACDONALD. My question is a fairly general one. Perhaps you know the figure. I was wondering if all the States don't have laws that state that minors may not be sold intoxicating beverages.

Mr. WILSON. I am under the impression that all States but five or some very small number have such laws.

Mr. MACDONALD. Wouldn't you think that is a good deal of protection aimed toward the group in which you have expressed the greatest interest, that of our youth? Don't you fell the prohibition of sale to minors is much more effective than laws prohibiting advertising of the beverage?

Mr. WILSON. I think one would support the other.

Mr. MACDONALD. Technically it just seems clear to me that if a boy who might have been enticed by this advertising incidentally, I think you give advertising more credit than perhaps it is due-but by way of using a figurative approach, if a minor was enticed and lived in Massachusetts, for example, where the law prohibits the sale to anyone under the age of 21, don't you think he his protected from the advertising by the State law itself?

Mr. WILSON. I think that would be true to a certain degree, yes. Mr. MACDONALD. I was also wondering if you had any figures available or had ever seen the rate of addiction during the prohibition era. It was a little before my time. But it is my understanding that the amount of drinking by youth in the flaming twenties was very great. I was wondering if you had any figures on addiction in those days and as compared to current figures.

Mr. WILSON. I don't have figures on that. I am in the same position as you are as far as age is concerned.

Mr. DOLLINGER. Would you say, Mr. Wilson, that if we passed the bill before us this morning, and we permitted the sale of alcohol in all the States to minors what the effect would be? Would there be less drinking than there is today?

(No response.)

Mr. DOLLINGER. Do you get my point? To prohibit the advertising of any sort.

Mr. WILSON. Isn't that what someone used to call an "iffy" question? I don't know. We would not know, I assume, until we tried it. Mr. DOLLINGER. Don't you agree the biggest problems is in the home? That if the parents protected their children, that advertising of all sorts could not make an entrance. Isn't that the biggest problem we have?

Mr. WILSON. We have four children in our home. They are not yet at the age where this is serious problem. Unless a parent is pre

pared to act as a keeper, I don't see how you can control television, particularly, or radio, either.

Mr. DOLLINGER. The reason I ask that question is because I remember-maybe Mr. Macdonald does not-I was born before prohibition, and we had no advertising of any sort. We had no radio, and we had no television. We had as much delinquency and children drank with or without the radio. I see the audience agrees. It is not the advertising or radio or television that makes drinkers.

Mr. MACDONALD. Mr. Wilson, I just want to have one thing clear in my mind, because Boston is noted for having many blue laws and so forth. I personally have radio and television, and I have children, and I am aware pretty much of what goes on television. But unless Massachusetts has a totally different reception than any other State in the Union, I have never seen any liquor advertising on television or radio. Is that my fault, or is it true that liquor is not advertised on radio or television?

Mr. WILSON. You are using the word "liquor." We were saying a *few minutes ago that the Distilled Spirits Institute has already voluntarily banned or perhaps the networks are in on this, too, the advertising of distilled spirits. Beer and wine are advertised.

Mr. MACDONALD. Beer and wine are. The bill would go to an individual industry, the liquor industry generally in its overall effect, but on radio and television-just to be clear in my own mind-it would go only to the subdivision of the industry known as the malt beverage and/or local option preventing the sale of it. Isn't that so?

Mr. WILSON. That would be my judgment.

Mr. MOULDER. In other words, it is your contention that is one of the harmful effects of advertising by TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, applying to those sales where sale is prohibited to certain groups, as well as to all in other States.

Mr. WILSON. That is correct.

Chairman PRIEST. Are there any further questions?

If not, I want to express my appreciation, as Mr. Klein did earlier, for the very fine tone of your statement, and for your fairness in presenting the statement, notwithstanding the fact that you presented it with forceful logic from your viewpoint. It was a statement on a high plane as all of the statements have been thus far.

It is now 12: 15. We will hear Mrs. Biddle as the next witness, and then recess until this afternoon. It is my very happy privilege to present Mrs. Biddle, a resident of my home State, although not from my congressional district. She is vice president of the National WCTU, and comes from the city of Knoxville, Tenn.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF MRS. C. V. BIDDLE, VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION

Mrs. BIDDLE. Thank you, Congressman Priest. I would like to ask that Miss Elizabeth Smart sit with me in order to present some exhibits which will give evidence as to whether the recommendations that were made by this committee last year are being observed, both in the letter and the spirit of the law, and also to file with you my testimony.

I am Mrs. C. V. Biddle of Knoxville, Tenn., vice president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. My address is 309 15th Street, Knoxville 15, Tenn. The Volunteer State is proud that Tennessee has given to Congress the person of the Honorable J. Percy Priest, who is chairman of your committee.

I appear before this committee to testify not only as a representative of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, an organization committed to the protection of the home and to the safeguarding of the security of the Nation by legislating and educating against the manufacture and consumption of alcoholic beverages. I come as a patriot, as a Christian citizen, as a mother deeply concerned as to the welfare of the youth of our country, to present reasons why this committee should vote favorably on the passage of bill H. R. 4627.

I am making this statement which is endorsed and approved by judges of the municipal juvenile and domestic relations court. The manufacture and consumption of alcoholic beverages constitute the chief factor in each major problem which we face in America today; crime, accidents, mental diseases including alcoholism, divorce, broken homes, juvenile delinquency, absenteeism from work, and so on.

Alcoholism is said by medical men who know the truth about it to be the fourth major health problem in the Nation. If a disease, alcoholism is the only one of the four major health ailments which enters into the field of behavior and becomes a liability in every area of life that concerns our happiness, health, safety, security and child welfare. Increasing in number year by year, the age level of the victims of alcoholism is dropping annually. Shortly before Dr. Robert V. Seliger's untimely death, he told me that it was not uncommon for youth under 25 years to come to his clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital for psychiatric and medical treatment for alcoholism.

Then he added an expression that broke my heart as a mother. "Seldom, if ever, have I seen an alcoholic under 25 who could be rehabilitated."

Through the media of advertising in newspapers, on television, radio and on billboards, young people, as well as older folk, are being induced to believe that temperance means moderation in drinking, that all gracious entertaining includes a glass of beer or a cocktail-that drinking is socially necessary and harmless. One has only to study the liquor ads, listen to the announcements by radio and view the audio presentation of alcoholic beverages' allurement to realize how subtle, how deceptive and misleading are its claims.

I see "The Man of Distinction" in the magazine, on the billboard, in the movie and on TV mixing and consuming beer, wine, or whisky. Then I go, as I did not too long ago, and stand by the side of a weeping mother, whose son had previously put on the uniform of his country to defend our freedoms, a boy from a good home, a boy who had been an honor student in high school, who was sentenced that day to prison for a crime he had committed under the influence of the beverages we allow to be legally advertised as "joyous, radiantly relaxing, temperate, bubbling over with happy living.'

A "Man of Distinction"; no, a "youth of extinction."

With probably at present some 65 million drinkers in the Nation, some 4 to 6 million alcoholics, the approximate million who die