Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1903-06-12
tdoonshIners and Fire Wardens.

fhoonshlners and Fire Wardens.
The Washington Post has n sugges-
ton which will be of much interest in
those sections recently devastated by
forest fires and also in the mountain
regions of the southern states where
forest fires are less numerous than
lawless outbreaks. The competition be-
tween our New England forest fires
the moonshiners is not at first appar-
ent hut the Post gets at it by consider
ing the millions of money we have ex-
pended in suppressing unlawful
whisky distilleries in the regions re-
ferred to, and then estimating the re-
suit of that expenditure applied intelli-
gently to the care and preservation of
our forests, public and private. Its
suggestion may not be one that the
government will readily take to, but it
at least furnishes food for serious
thought Here is the Posts opinion Of
the use of money in detecting and
prosecuting the mountain manufac-
turers of whisky who seek to evade the
payment of the;'internal revenue tax:
mot to waste time in rhetorical APP
proaches, we may express at once our
idea that the costly and mischieVOuS
machinery of detection and prosccu-
ton in the case of the SO-called moon
sinners of Kentucky, Tennessee, West
Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
is both useless and perniciOus. and
that the same machinery, employed to
the protection of our forests, would be
in the highest degree beneficent. The
districts we have named swarm with
government officials, who, sooner or
later, are paid out of the public treas
ury. The chief fruit of their activity
is the limitation-not the prevention,
for it goes on just the samc-of the
product of Illicit stills. It's concurrent
fruit is the creation of 4 community Of
outlaws. of a class devoted to hostility
to the government and its representa-
tivcs. The mourtanccrs become
pariahs. their hands against every
man. and every mans hand against
violence and barharsm in all their va
rious and dreadful forms. The vic
Tins of the arrangement are bred t.
hatred of the law and its visible agents
and expressions They band together
as brigands. They convert our hills
into provinces of crime, and from TINS
germ we derive, by natural and l"%i-
cal evolution, the harvest OF tht
vendetta and the feud.'
1t may be that the Post puts it rath-
or too strongly when it makes the ~
ternal revenue officers the cause OF the
bloody feuds of those mountain regions
but undoubtedly the attempts to On
force the law against the moonshiner'
have resulted in much laW'cssness ah'
much bitter feeling against the gov
ernment The work of the officers /,
in no sense in the interests Of tenn
ncr,nce but to enforce the intcrn2
revenue laws among the mountainc"l%
who distill whisky on a small scale
The public revenues gain but little
through their efforts and tn" Er"a
diStillrrS who control the WHISKY III
dustry and pay their taxes. feel No
competition from these moonshin"rs
If the government should us" the
money paid to these officers for the
emplovment of waIdonS in the district
which are constantly suffering grca
losses by forest fires it would unuucs
tionably be profitable change.
Whether or not it gives up the pur
suits and prosecution of the moon
shirers, we believe the national gov
mont will soon be forced to thu
realization that it must devote more
energy to the protection and prcscrva
ton of the forests. 1t is already max
ing good beginnings in this matter bu
it will have to do much more, and tn
policy supporting n warden service II
the endangered sections, as Maine ant
some other states are trying to do i'll
limited way, is one which will have Iii
rect and practical results.