Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1907-08-21
MooNsHINERs PASSING OUT.
Comparatively Little Illicit Distuling
Is Done Now.
Washington Dispatch]

which has been written in official
reports to the government during
the past half century. In that story.
is written much of romance, poesy
and tragedy. AS tale, it is dis
tinotly American; and it tells the
life history of many venturesome
mountaineer and the members of his
family who have fought for what
they believed to be principle.
The midnight of the illioit dis
tiller has been sounded. He is pass
ing into the shadows of a romantic
history and in few years he will be
known no more forever.
In the years, particularly since the
civil war, he has given the govern.
ment more trouble than many con-
flicts with foreign powers would have
caused merely because he thought he
was right. No man who ever came
into personal contact with a manu-
facturer of .'mountain dew" could
fail to be impressed with the idea
that the moonshiner felt that he was
well within his rights as an American
citizen. In the Businesses of the
mountains, into which he was driven
by those whom he regarded as perse-
cutors, he thought the whole matter
out for himself and became con-
vinced that the government had no
right to pursue him and prevent him
from manufacturing whiskey from
the products of the soil which he
raised himself. He could not be
made to understand why he should
be. compelled by the government to
pay an internal tax on product of
corn or rye while miller was not
compelled to do the same.
AS result, the moonshiner un.
siung his long rife and, with powder
and lead, fought the advance of the
revenue agents. 1t was life for life,
and the Sfrightful tragedies which
have occurred in the South, where
most of the illicit distilling was car
ried on, would make volumes of vivid
reading.
The day of the moonshiner, how
ever, is done. The records contained
in official reports to the government
indicate that the work of illicit dis
tilling practically is ended. Curl.
ously enough the end, which has
come slowly, is not entirely due 10
the activities of the agents of the
revenue service, but rather to public
opinion in the South. The belief is
growing in that section of the coun-
try, whether right or wrong, that
solution of the race question is de-
pendent on the stamping out of the
manufacture of whiskey. 1t is felt
that so long as whiskey may be OBJ
tanned easily by the negroes, race
trouble cannot be eradicated.
The general result of this senti-
ment, which has permeated the
Socth generally, is the enactment of
the most stringent liquor laws by
the Legislatures, and in some in.
stances recently to be noted, the en-
actment of absolute prohibition laws.
That those laws are to be enforced
by the State authorities is evidenced
by the attitude of the judges who
hear liquor cases brought before
them. One judge alone, in Georgia,
has been occupied for nearly twenty
years in disposing of cases of illicit
distilling, and it has been his duty
to impose recently sentences on men
whose grandfathers, years ago, went
to prison for similar offences.
In the opinion of the government
officials, the day of illicit distilling
of whiskey on any considerable scale
has passed and it is expected that in
a few years the moonshiner will have
disappeared as completely from the
South as from any other part of the
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