The Battle of Franklin Farms: John Philip's Jest With Booze

IN THE 1920S, when this brief history opens, 3 West Franklin Street, Baltimore, was a three-story town house squeezed in between the Rochambeau Apartments on its east and a solid row of nondescript brick buildings on its west. The only breathing space was a little courtyard, dark and undistinguished. Undistinguished, that is, except for one thing, the lively imagination of Congressman John Philip Hill, whose wife had inherited the property from her mother.

John Boynton Philip Clayton Hill was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1879. His place of birth, it seems, was a whim of fate. Years later, when drumming up votes in the Third Congressional District, he marched into an Fast Baltimore home, stopped an astonished housewife in the midst of her sweeping, and declared with a grandiloquent gesture, “Madam, I might have been born in this house if my mother had not been away visiting at the time.”It is said that he managed to find more Third District homes to be almost born in than there were beds for George Washington.

In 1900 he tied for top honors at Johns Hopkins and in 1903 graduated from Harvard Law School with such éclat that he was asked to teach government at Harvard, which he did. After a year he came to Baltimore, and in 1910 was appointed United States Attorney for Maryland, an office which he held until he left with the National Guard for service on the Mexican border.

After World War I, from which he emerged as a lieutenant colonel, politics absorbed him. In 1920 he was elected to Congress as a Republican from the normally Democratic Third Maryland District. In this period, the most inflammatory of all political issue’s was prohibition. The fact that Maryland was one of the few states that rejected a local enforcement law showed the temper of a majority of its citizens. On this issue John Philip Hill could hardly have been a more loyal son of his own state. He was a wholehearted, dyed-in-the-wool, 100 per cent antiprohibitionist.

Prohibition was the most philanthropic political phenomenon that we have ever experienced. Its sole motivation was the alleged benefit of others. No one wanted prohibition for himself; it was always for the good of someone else.

The backbone of prohibition was in the rural areas, but it was designed for the salvation of city people. Righteousness demanded that city dwellers be parched dry for their own good, even though farmers were to remain free to convert their apples and fruit juices into time-honored beverages.

Section 1 of the Volstead Act defined “intoxicating liquor” as any beverage containing more than one half of one per cent alcohol, but a neat little amendment was tacked onto the punishment section, stating that “The penalties provided in this Act against the manufacture of liquor without a permit shall not apply to a person for manufacturing nonintoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home.”

The avowed purpose of this amendment was to spare farmers from a pitiable plight. Representative John A. Moon, of Tennessee, pointed out that “If a farmer should permit a keg of sweet cider to ferment and contain more than ½ of 1% of alcohol and did not throw it away immediately on knowledge thereof, he would have to pay fines or have to go to jail and probably lose his farm.”

Farm lovers all over Congress suddenly discovered that the making of cider from nonsalable apples was essential to the national economy. And in the general spirit of thinking of the other guy, a tearful plea was made for citizens of Italian and Greek birth, “whose custom it is to make a small quantity of wine for consumption in their homes.”

Thus were cider and fruit juices exempted from penalty if made in the home for domestic consumption, provided only that they were nonintoxicating in fact, whatever that might mean. Unlike other potations, they were not arbitrarily limited to one half of one per cent. The exception had broad support from the agricultural areas. It has been authoritatively stated that the Volstead Act could not have been passed if it had outlawed the pious enthusiasm with which farmers salvaged their bruised apples and other fruit. On the other hand, righteous regard for the souls of city dwellers required that beer and other urban beverages be kept strictly below one half of one per cent.

FROM the very first, John Philip Hill’s heart bled for the city dwellers. In addition, it bled for John Philip Hill, and no one was quicker than he to sense the campaign possibilities. In Congress he became a thorn in the flesh of the Drys. He challenged Wayne B. Wheeler to debate. He kept up a stream of needling correspondence with Prohibition Commissioner Roy A. Haynes. He denounced the minions of the Anti-Saloon League. At every opportunity he pilloried the outrageous discrimination in favor of the farmers.

From a political standpoint it paid off magnificently. in January, 1923, a debate in New York with Wayne B. Wheeler, general counsel of the Anti-Saloon League, drew not only a capacity house but also headlines. In April a mass meeting turned out in Cumberland for Hill’s denunciation of George W. Crabbe and the local Drys. In July more headlines heralded his attacks on Roy A. Haynes. It was heady stuff, but by autumn Hill really hit his stride. In the Baltimore Sunpapers, the back page customarily carries the most important local news. For a time John Philip Hill made the back page his home.

On Wednesday, August 22, 1923, it sported a large picture of him with the following story:

Congressman John Philip Hill today served formal and solemn notice on the Prohibition Commissioner and the Collector of Internal Revenue for Maryland that on or about noon, September 7, he will begin producing nonintoxicating fruit juices for use in his home. His intention is to get from the prohibition department a definition of “nonintoxicating” as used in the Volstead Act.

“When the new regulations concerning the manufacture for home use of cider and similar fruit juices were issued,” he said, “I expected to find the definition in them. But after reading them carefully I find that ‘nonintoxicating’ is defined simply as ‘nonintoxicating.’

“So I’m going up in the country and get some grapes and go down on Baltimore Street and get a press, and I’m going to start making grape juice. I have written the Prohibition Commissioner to ask him just when I should stop fermentation. In his answer I expect to learn alter two years of inquiry just when a beverage ceases to be nonintoxicating and becomes intoxicating.”

On Wednesday, September 5, the paper carried a back-page picture of John Philip embarking on a hydrometer hunt, in the capacity of “private citizen and seeker for truth.”

On Thursday, another picture showed him with baskets of Anne Arundel County grapes. “In making my grape juice,” he said, “I will follow the directions of the Department of Agriculture.” But he could find no hydrometer that would register the alcoholic content of fruit juice. The Bureau of Standards in Washington advised him to distill and measure a known amount, but this was against the law. He had been told that an ebulliometer would do it. This was a costly instrument, however, and the Prohibition Enforcement Unit had the only one available. “What’s a poor man to do?” he demanded.

On September 7, the paper reported that the great experiment to learn the truth about prohibition had begun. With his stanch ally in science, Captain W. H. Stayton of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, Hill had waited fifteen minutes for government agents to show up, and when none arrived he proceeded to squeeze his grapes, amid photographers’ flashes.

“Tomorrow,” said John Philip, “I’m going to take samples of my stuff and ask the Prohibition Department for an analysis. Then, alter ten days I’m going to ask another test, and so on until I am ordered to stop fermentation. In ninety days I’m going to bring over the Judicial Committee of the House and ask them to sample my nonintoxicating fruit juices.”

On September 8, the headline read:

HILL’S GRAPES BUBBLING AND HE AWAITS RESULTS

On September 10, Congressman Hill was reported in Southampton, Long Island. “But,”said the paper. “His Spirits Go Marching On.”

On September 18, it was reported that samples tested by Penniman & Browne. Chemists, registered an alcoholic content of 6.31 per cent. John Philip so advised Prohibition Director Haynes and penned a further appeal: “My grape juice is still fermenting and the alcoholic content is daily becoming greater. I therefore request an immediate answer.’”

Haynes and his minions purported to remain stonily aloof. But on September 27, just after an official pronouncement that the Prohibition Unit would have no part in Hill’s shenanigans, two agents arrived at his home with an ebulliometer. It was a device for measuring boiling point, but after John Philip had helped the agents do this with every sample in the cellar, it was discovered that they did not have the chart needed to translate boiling point into alcoholic content.

On September 28, the back page headlined that Haynes was awaiting a report on Hill’s wine. But it seemed that the congressman had already got inside information. There was said to be 11 per cent in one sample, and John Philip was loudly proclaiming 12 per cent as the permissible limit. He wrote Attorney General Daugherty. He laid the matter before the Council of Governors. He placed a call to President Coolidge.

It was a woman who decided that matters had gone far enough. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of prohibition enforcement, directed the district attorney for Maryland to take action. At first, U.S. Attorney Amos W. W. Woodcock demurred. He and John Philip Hill had been brother officers in the Maryland National Guard, and he knew that Hill hoped for the publicity of an indictment. But orders were orders, and on October 4, the evening Sun reported that the matter would be submitted to the grand jury.

Colonel Woodcock did not seek an indictment but instead obtained a court order padlocking John Philip’s cellar. It was the first such proceeding known to have been taken against a private dwelling, although it was standard practice to padlock speakeasies under the nuisance provisions of the Volstead Act. In keeping with this procedure, an order for a temporary injunction was signed by U.S. District Judge Morris A. Soper. This was on Thursday, October 11, and on that afternoon the back page of the evening Sun carried a picture of John Philip Hill applying red, white, and blue seals to his cellar door, each bearing a profile of President Abraham Lincoln.

The ensuing period was one of discouragement. For more than a month, few newspapers had gone on the streets of Baltimore without John Philip Hill’s name or picture on the back page. But there was reticence about matters pending before the courts, and the publicity dried up. Besides, the injunction proceeding seemed to have been put on ice. The court was reluctant to be used as a steppingstone in Hill’s progress toward reelection. and the district attorney could think of hundreds of things he would rather do than try the case. Hill’s attorney, Arthur W. Machen, Jr., was one of the most astute and forceful lawyers of his day. But strain and struggle as he might, he never could get a date set for a full-scale trial.

And so the wine experiment was left, temporarily, in a stalemate. To one of John Philip Hill’s temperament, this was galling. But even aside from all the publicity, he had gained at least one victory. On September 7, 1923, Roy A. Haynes, goaded beyond endurance, had answered a letter of Hill’s in a way that made the front page in Baltimore and many other cities and was summarized by the evening Sun of September 18, in the follow - ing headlines:

HAYNES ADMITS DRY LAW DISCRIMINATES IN FAVOR OF FARMERS

SAYS IN REPLY TO HILL’S QUERY MEASURE WAS NEVER INTENDED TO CHECK THEIR ALCOHOLIC RIGHTS

VAGUENESS OF RULE INTENTIONAL TO ALLOW MAKING WINES AND CIDER

MUST BE FARMER TO ENJOY THIS PRIVILEGE, IS INFERENCE, AND CITY DWELLER WHO USURPS IT IS LIABLE TO ARREST

This, of course, is just what John Philip had been maintaining all along.

In June, 1924, Hill sailed for England to address the antiprohibition conference in London. After his return it was apparent that the ocean voyage had exerted a benign influence. He had, he said, decided to become a dirt farmer and raise apples in the back yard of Franklin Farms. “I shall go to work at once to convert the land adjoining my home in Franklin Street into a small farm and make for myself a press in accordance with the recommendations of the Department of Agriculture.”

The “land adjoining my home” was a small brick-paved courtyard, inhabited only by stinkwood trees and trash. Except for an entranceway leading in from the sidewalk, it was enclosed on two sides by Mr. Hill’s house, on a third by the frowning battlements of a seven-story apartment building, and on the back by a high brick wall.

But on September 8, under the aegis of John Philip’s green thumb, it was transformed. The stinkwoods had miraculously become apple trees, their boughs laden with forbidden fruit tied on with string. Here and there in tubs stood smaller trees which had been apple from birth. An oldfashioned cider press occupied the center of the stage, and in the background loomed a freshly painted barn through whose windows peered contented cows. Although convincingly bovine, one of them wore thick horn-rimmed spectacles; the other sported a large cigar.

Hill’s agricultural miracle drew admirers like a magnet. The great Henry L. Mencken, himself no lover of prohibition, was an early visitor and inspired, if he did not write, the following tribute in the evening Sun:

Under the spreading apple tree Congressman John Philip Hill stood today and watched the birth of Franklin Farms.

As proof of Mr. Hill’s wizardry in enticing trees to grow, there stands this afternoon an orchard of seven healthy trees, their branches drooping beneath the weight of cider apples. The brick wall in the rear has become a red and white striped barn and over the door is the legend “Franklin Farms.”

Mr. Hill’s painstaking fidelity to nature has gone even further. On cither side of the barn door is a window and from each window leans a fragrant breathed cow, so lifelike that one expects a contralto “Moo” at any moment. By some freak of nature they resemble George W. Crabbe, Superintendent of the Maryland Anti-Saloon League, and Prohibition Commissioner Rov A. Haynes. When Mr. Hill’s attention was called to this he evidenced a surprise which was equaled only by his profound interest in the phenomenon.

To a casual observer, the cows seemed to have been sired by the cartoonist of the Baltimore Sun, but this was indignantly denied. “Nature’s ways are wondrous to behold,” said Mr. Hill.

On September 8, Franklin Farms was formally dedicated, amid musical renditions of In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree. On September 9, Farmer Hill, in overalls, started making cider, and on September 16, the evening Sun reported:

HILL WILL STAGE PARTY TO FORCE HAND OF HAYNES PLANS TO INVITE FRIENDS TO DRINK 2.75% CIDER

Mr. Hill estimates that tomorrow at noon his cider will contain 2.75% of alcohol. He will then pasteurize it to stop fermentation and on Saturday night will invite in his friends to drink.

On Wednesday, the paper explained that Hill planned to pasteurize his cider by immersing jugs of it in 140-degree water, and on Thursday reported:

CONGRESSMAN WORKS ALL NIGHT TO KEEP APPLE JUICE IN BOUNDS

“Anybody who wants to help me force Prohibition Commissioner Haynes to testify for 2.75% beer and is willing to take a chance of arrest is invited fo my party Saturday,” Hill said.

“The cider will be labeled ‘2.75% cider, legal for the farmer.’ There will also be some beer marked, ‘Less than ½ of 1% beer, legal lor die city man.'”

EACH day the headlines grew, and by Saturday everyone in town was Hill’s friend, eager to taste his cider. Sixty-five gallons disappeared in about as many minutes, along with a few swigs of nearbeer and mountains of doughnuts. In spite of rain, the turnout had been so enormous and so highly publicized that it could not be ignored. Not by Haynes; not by Wheeler; not even by Coolidge. On Tuesday, September 23, the headlines ran:

WOODCOCK TOLD TO TAKE ACTION ON HILL PARTY

MRS. WILLEBRANDT, ASST. ATTY. GEN., ORDERS INVESTIGATION

There was no dillydallying this time. On September 24, Hill was indicted by the grand jury, and on September 30, he was arraigned. He pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers, Arthur W. Machen, Jr., and Shirley Carter, asked for an immediate trial, but Judge Soper wanted no campaigning in his courtroom and set the case for November 10, after the election.

Franklin Farms proved as fruitful of votes as of apples. On November 4, Hill swamped his Democratic. opponent, Dr. George Heller, by almost two to one.

On Monday, November 10, the trial got under way in the very court in which for live years Hill had himself been the chief prosecuting officer. Presiding was Federal Judge Morris A. Soper, who had been appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1923. Judge Soper was regarded as a bulwark of prohibition. But no one could have handled a trial with greater dignity and impartiality. Hill had been indicted for manufacturing and possessing intoxicating wine and cider, and for maintaining a public nuisance at his home at 3 West Franklin Street. Judge Soper was to find the nuisance charge unsupported by the evidence, and even at the outset it was apparent that the crucial issue was whether Hill’s wine and cider were intoxicating. On this, Judge Soper held that the one half of one per cent limitation was not applicable, and that the wine and cider were not illegal unless they were intoxicating in fact.

What, then, was in fact intoxicating? Hill’s witnesses described prodigious feats of drinking without intoxication. The government, on the other hand, produced people who tottered at the mere mention of alcohol. One was the eminent and respected Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins fame. He testified that even the minutest drop must be considered intoxicating.

Another government witness, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, also testified that any alcohol whatever is intoxicating. He had been chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture for thirty years, and in puffing up his professional qualifications for the benefit of court and jury, the district attorney brought out that he held a degree from the University of Berlin. This was all the lead that Mr. Machen required. Soon he had Dr. Wiley reminiscing happily about beer parties as a feature of German student life. He had often drunk beer all night, he said, without missing any classes the next day. And he recalled with special pride winning a prize by walking a straight line after thirteen quarts of beer.

It was clear that the element of time had also to be considered, since the wallop of an alcoholic beverage depends on how fast you drink it. To the defense, the appropriate pace was that of a Kentucky colonel contentedly sipping a julep on his wisteria-covered veranda; to the prosecution, it was a question of whether one would drown before becoming inebriated. The choice was between the parlor and the pigsty.

On this issue, Judge Soper was something less than helpful to the defense. He instructed the jury that intoxicating liquor is liquor “which contains such a proportion of alcohol that it will produce intoxication when imbibed in such quantities as it is practically possible for a man to drink.” This definition makes it difficult to wink at the intoxicating qualities of 11 per cent wine.

At times it was puzzling to know just who was being tried. Mr. Hill’s admirers had presented him with a huge basket of pink and yellow chrysanthemums, and he looked more like an honored guest than a prisoner in the dock. Also, his lawyers were not only corporation counsel of great eminence, serving without fee, but whenever possible, they took the offensive. They demanded the introduction of the Hill-Haynes correspondence, and they kept offering in evidence bulletins of the Department of Agriculture on the fermentation of cider and the processing of grapes. The government had to struggle fiercely to have such embarrassments excluded.

Finally, the shouting and the tumult died, and at 1:47 P.M. on Wednesday, November 12, John Philip’s fate was entrusted to the jury. For a time the crowd in the courtroom lingered, expecting a prompt verdict. When the jury failed to return, the spectators drifted away, and the participants grew tense. Mrs. Machen had brought Hill a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. He said that this gave him consolation, but soon seemed to lose interest. Perhaps he recalled that it had been written in jail.

Night came, and still no verdict. It would be a close thing, and for the first time, perhaps, John Philip saw yawning before him an abyss which the excitement of the prior proceedings had tended to obscure. A conviction would almost certainly mean his expulsion from the House of Representatives. Hill’s persistent needling and ridicule had infuriated every Dry in Congress. During the earlier wine episode there had been an organized movement to censure or impeach him for deliberate violation of the prohibition law. It failed chiefly because his padlocking had left the issue of guilt in suspense. If he were now convicted, it was easy to foresee the result. The Drys had the votes, and it was only a question of how they would go about it.

When Judge Soper went home for the night, he left word that if the jury came to an agreement it should leave a sealed verdict. The night wore on without it. Finally, after seventeen hours, the jury left a paper with the clerk and went out for breakfast. Apparently, it was the tantalizing smell of bacon from a restaurant across the street that got the wheels of justice off dead center. At 10 A.M. the court reassembled and the verdict was opened. It read, “Not guilty of the matters in which he stands indicted.”

Congratulations poured in from all sides.

There was even a poem for the occasion, entitled Johnfillup’s Victory, which ended:

What passes for progress has long since reduced the house to rubble and converted Franklin Farms into a parking lot. The roar of traffic has replaced the squeak of the cider press. But to the initiated, a special aura still lingers. Such a one need only stand there in the autumn moonlight, and the passing rumble will conjure up the deep-throated laugh of John Philip Hill sampling his vintage.