“In making the recommendation I gave you in my message in regard to this matter, and in going to the extreme in suggesting that we appeal to the government to rescind that part of the Prohibition law which gives rabbis permission to issue permits for the purchase and distribution of wine for ritual purposes, I did so after very mature consideration. I am sure that after (his successor) shall have been in the chair of the conference for any length of time, he will come to exactly the same conclusions as I did. “You gentlemen, members of the conference, who have dealt with this situation as a local question have had, here and there, some small question to solve; but when you become president of the conference and have letters from every part of the country, almost day by day, asking you as president of the conference to give the necessary authority to all sorts of men in all sorts of conditions, to purchase and distribute wine for ritual purposes, then you will take a different angle on this whole situation. “I pointed out to one of my colleagues, next to whom I was just now sitting, that within the past month I have received requests from three different men calling themselves rabbis in their communities, for authorization to purchase and distribute wine. I know that I am not exaggerating when I say that during this last year I received requests from not less than 150 men in all parts of the country for permits to distribute wine.... I had the applicants investigated, and I may say to you that in nine cases out of ten we found those who were attempting to use this conference, through its executive officers, for the obtaining of this authority, were men who had not the slightest right to stand before their communities as rabbis. “What were they for the most part? They were men without the slightest pretense at rabbinical training or position who, for the purpose of getting into the wholesale liquor business, if you will, organized congregations. Nothing on God’s earth could prevent them from doing so. They simply gathered around them little companies of men; they called them congregations; and then, under the law as it now exists, they were privileged to purchase and distribute wine to these people. And I call your attention to the fact that many of the so-called members of these congregations were not members of one congregation only! (Laughter.) This is not a laughing matter. They were not only members of one congregation, but members of two, three, four and upward. Why, you don’t know what good Jews many have become since this law has gone into effect!