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13 and arrest any suspicious character" coming about. According to the New York Times, response to the ultimatum was "more or less merriment," and no bootleggers planned to put the SOB on their "blacklist." 10 e day aer Christmas, though, Curtis showed how serious he was concerning liquor in the Capitol. He had the bottle-dropping waiter fired. 11 Despite the Curtis mandate, the Times considered Washing- ton's reaction to Prohibition to be a "farce," noting, in January, 1923, that two bootleggers had recently "come to blows" over a territory dispute in the HOB. 12 Two months later, another inci- dent created a "sensation" among the Washington elite. In March, prohibition agents confiscated a bootlegger's extensive customer list, including high-level military officers, as well as the "social register of official life in the National Capital." 13 e revelation that elected and appointed officials solicited black-market alco- hol surprised few "wet" leaders in the House and Senate, who oen accused "dry" members of drinking "as they pleased." Just a few weeks prior to the bootlegger raid, Representative James Gallivan, a "wet" Democrat from Massachusetts, posed a question on the House floor, asking "every dry Congressman who voted dry and who takes a drink and likes a drink to raise his hand." e request resulted in laughter, but no raised hands. 14 When speaking to the public, several members scoffed at the notion that their own colleagues would purchase illicit alcohol. Addressing the House in 1924, Texas Representative omas Blanton, a "dry" Democrat, asserted, "I do not believe there is a Member in this House, whether there are any who are addicted to drink or not, who would buy liquor from a bootlegger: I do not believe it." 15 Such skeptics, though, did concede that bootleggers reaped "a harvest" in the Capitol, even if they claimed that the customers were ordinary staff members. 16 e Sun referred to the "open secret": "the Capitol Building, where the dry laws for the nation were made, has been a distributing point for wet goods for many months." 17 Several factors contributed to the Capitol's thriving whis- key market. Under Prohibition's enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, there was no explicit ban on buying alcohol, just selling it. In addition, members of Congress felt particu- larly immune from prosecution, due to the Article 1, Section 6 clause in the Constitution that states senators and representatives Vice President Charles Curtis in July 1929 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION