ADVENT OF PRESIDENT TAFT

When the last of these cases was finally decided in the District Courts, President Taft came into the White House. A very remarkable event is now to be recorded. He ordered a rehearing of the whisky problem. A classmate of President Taft, Mr. Lloyd Bowers, had been made Solicitor of the Department of Justice. President Taft first requested Mr. Capers to conduct the new hearings on whisky. This was equivalent to instructing the jury to bring in a verdict. Owing to the protests of the straight whisky interests President Taft finally appointed his Solicitor-General, Lloyd Bowers, to hold these hearings. They have been printed under the title "Proceedings Before and By Direction of the President Concerning the Meaning of Whisky." They cover 1328 printed pages. Following is the order of the President constituting this tribunal:

In the Office of the Solicitor-General,

Thursday, April 8, 1909.

These proceeding are had pursuant to an order of the President of the United States, reading as follows:

EXECUTIVE ORDER

A number of distillers and importers of spirits and whisky, represented by Lawrence Maxwell, Esq., Hon. Joseph H. Choate, Alfred Lucking, Warwick M. Hough, and Hon. W. W. Armstrong, having appealed to the President for a hearing with respect to the order issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, known as Order No. 723, pursuant to the rules and regulations for the enforcement of the food and drugs act and food and inspection decision No. 65, promulgated and made by the Secretary of Agriculture under date of May 14, 1908, claiming that the provisions of said order are in violation of the terms of the said act in that they require to be branded as imitations or compounds, or otherwise, whiskies which have well-settled names in the trade, and which it was not the intention of Congress by the said food and drugs act to require to be described by any other designation; and certain distillers of whisky having appeared by Edmund W. Taylor and the Hon. John G. Carlisle, after consideration the matter is hereby referred to Hon. Lloyd W. Bowers, Solicitor-General of the United States, to take testimony and report to the President his opinion upon the following points, namely:

I.

What was the article called whisky as known (1) to the manufacturers, (2) to the trade, and (3) to the consumers at and prior to the date of the passage of the pure food law?

II.

What did the term whisky include?

III.

Was there included in the term whisky any maximum or minimum of congeneric substances as necessary in order that distilled spirits should be properly designated whisky?

IV.

Was there any abuse in the application of the term whisky to articles not properly falling within the definition of that term at and prior to the passage of the pure food law, which it was the intention of Congress to correct by the provisions of that act?

V.

Is the term whisky as a drug applicable to a different product than whisky as a beverage? If so, in what particulars?

The Solicitor-General will from time to time determine the extent and character of the hearing and will report with his opinion the evidence taken by him pursuant hereto.

(No. 1061, Apr. 8, 1909.)

(Signed) WM. H. TAFT.