Morning journal and courier., 1882-07-29
Saturday Morning, July 29, 1882.
REMARKS BY AN OLD DIsTILLER.

MT. Gersh Martin, of Peoria, Illinois, is veteran distiller and also 8 man who thinks for himself. He has made some remarks to Peoria reporter which are worthy of gen. eral notice. He thinks that we may escape a panic, but if the panic comes it will start in whiskey. He illustrates this proposition by I accounting what has happened. There have
 been two periods in the history of the distil- ler's trade, he says, in which it was possible
 to manufacture and export spirits on & large l scale at profit. The first was the time of l the Crimean war-1S54-56. The war over, | the exportation abruptly ceased. But the distillers, drunken with their brief prosper l ity, had enlarged their plants, borrowing l money right and left for the purpose, as ] though the foreign demand was to be per 1 manent thing. When it stopped in 1857, they were left with an excessive stock on ! hand, and crippled with debt. Cincinnati was then the center of the distilling interest
 The Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company of that city was loaded down with distillers' | paper. It had been esteemed one of the sol idest institutions in the country. One summer morning the news ran from city to city that ! it's paper had gone to protest in New York ''All the other banks in the country says
 MT. Martin, ''came tumbling down after it
 the panic of 1857.
 A few years ago the distillers had another
 good chance. Corn was abundant and cheap
 ill this country, crops were short and prices high abroad and American distillers were
 able to flood the European markets. It was 8 fine boom" while it lasted, and the dis
 tillers, as in 1654-56, at once launched into extravagant expenditures and loaded them selves up with debts, as though it
 was to last forever. But how do things stand now? The exportation has dropped from 100000 bushels in 1sso-'s1 to
 nothing at all. Indeed, month or SO ago. cargo of 2,50O barrels was reshipped to this
 country by the foreign customer To make
 the matter worse, the price of corn is twice
 what it was in 1880. Instead of exercising
 prudence, Mir. Martin says:
 ''To keep their costly machinery running and their vast capital active, the distillers are
 pllng up .whiskey in bond,' until now there
 are ln the United States over 15O, OOO, GOO gal
 Ions of whiskey on hand, 90, COG, ,OOO being stored ln government bonded warehouses,
 under lock and key. Now, somebody has to
 hold all this whiskey, and some banks must
 furnish to somebody the money to .hold' it
 with. l should withdraw my deposits from such bank, If were SO fortunate as to have money to dePoslt. * If a collapse occurs, it will begin at some one of the
 vile or Chicago. It will be likely to begin
 with the collapse of some bank, or banks, loaded down with whislSey paper. Then will come the distillers, and as there are less than one hundred of them all told-less in fact. than seventy -fve-and as they are all bound tOCeth0r- th6v will f,n. rylng disaster and destruction in their train. All this ripened' whiskay, upon which such high hopes are based, may, will be forced on the market in hopes to realize but in- s stead ot S6 1t may tumble to 60 cents gal. lon, entaillng bankruptcy and ruin on dis tlllers, wholesalers, retailers, and their bonds- men,"
 Whatever may be thought of this prognos- tication, few will deny that MT. Martin gives the distillers and liquor dealers good advice concerning their attitude towards the tenn. perance movement. He reminds them that the slavery interest was immeasurably strong CT than the whiskey interest. Yet it could not hold up against an aroused moral senti ment. He says:
 There are less than one hundred great dis tllleries in the whole United States The re- l tail dealers, the "saloon men," are generally men without means and not of habits to ac- | quire much wealth. With rare exceptions. like Peoria, the wholesale dealers axe not much 1 better. The social position of the liquor trade 1 holds no sort of comparison to the social status of American slavery. The moral and relieious l sentiment of American society is against it. 1 The women are against it. This moral senti- | ment stands like stone wall to confront it. Of course this is free country and any 1 man, any editor, any class, or any interest l has an undoubted right to beat it's brains out | against this stone wall. It is their privilege 1 as well as their right. But personally you 1 can count me out of any such idiotio s'd-d l nonsense" Let the liquor men 90 along | quietly; let them take out their license and | obey strictly the law; let them provoke as | little attention as possible to their business let them ward off opposition by seeking 1 to conciliate rather than antagonize the moral sentiment of the whole country, and | their business will go on with as little dis tnrbance and annoyance as it is possible to l do. But let a financial collapse of the dis 1 tllling interest occur now, or in the near flu ture, and 1t will scare every capitalist and l business man from ever re. engaging in the distilling business. Then, with the tenn | perance element rampant, and no capital to fight it with, prohibition could be enforced, and in ten years there would not be left dis. tiliery, brewery, or 8 saloon in the whole United States.