11 MASON STREET, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., April 21, 1925.
In calling for the modification of the eighteenth amendment after a five years' trial, we would like to ask you frankly where the reforms of the world would have been if your spirit had animated the reformers, your speed spirit.
The United States abolished the slave-trade in 1807. In 1810, Madison is calling on the Nation to put down the illicit traffic. In 1817 Monroe is calling for more enforcement laws. In the thirties the illicit traffic blazes into 200,000 slaves smuggled across annually.
But in 1871 we find in our Congressional Record the last act against the slave trade. You see it took more than five short years after the prohibition slave law was passed to enforce it. It took two generations!
Take again our Constitution, 1787. It made us a Nation -- on paper. Then came the struggle to enforce the law. Washington died 1799 in despair that the Constitution would ever become a working reality. John Marshall took up the fight against decentralization and for federalism. He died in 1835 in despair that we should ever become a Nation. But we came through despite the doubting Thomases and the men who saw more money in local option than in nationalism.
But it took more than five years to come through. You and I like to think we should have had the staying power to see these glorious reforms through, that 50 years rather than 5 years would have been the length of our vision.
I ask you would any great reform have come to pass had five years been the limit given in which to bring the unconvinced minority up to the new ideal and work out all the intricacies of enforcement?
I ask you, would your attitude have lost or gained for us the abolition of the slave trade or the establishment of our Republic?
Read a little history, think a little longer, probe a little deeper, and come back to the ranks of those who enlist, not for five years, but for the duration of the war.
Sincerely,
(Signed) ELIZABETH TILTON.
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