Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-09-11

effect, moonshinng in Georgia, Alabama, and Misss
sppi has increased more than one hundred per cent
Before prohibition whisky sold for about dollar and
a half gallon; now it is four Prohibition laws have
done away with the sending in of whisky and SO the
mountaineer is now reapng his harvest.
So remunerative is moonshinng in several counties in
Georgia in the Blue Ridge Mountains and its chains
that ninety per cent. of the people either moon
sinners active sympathizers.
Against all this the unsung revenue officers must
wage their thankless That they doing so is
shown by the fact that during the fiscal year which ended
June 30 1909 they seized and destroyed two hundred
and thrty-one illicit dstilleres in Alabama three hun
dred and seventyfour in North Carolina, and six hum
dred and twenty-three in Georgia.
In 1905 eleven hundred and thirty illicit dstileries
were seized in the United States; 1909, seventeen
hundred and forty-three.
So widely separated and SO differently do they work,
that the followers of secretve dstilng given differ
ent names. In Georgia they called "moonshiners;
in Alabama they are known "wildcatters'; in the
CarolinaS they are "bockaders
Moonshners- giving that the preference not 60
about their candestne business in the blind way they
did, The game now has too much at stake to trust
luck And it also becoming dangerous, thanks
to treleSs officers The moonshiners well organ
lied secret society, and banded together for
mutual protection They divide into colonies and set
Elements in obscure mountain districts, and each set
Element has its recognized leader. They all sworn
by bloody and secret oaths to protect another
They stand by another through thick and thin.
Never does one of them turn States evidence.
So up to date and progressive have they become that
each colony is provided with telephones. Moonshiners
usually group their houses each side of road with
several of the houses scattered halfme more back
If family in of the outlying houses discovers the
"revenooers," hears suspicious sound during the
night every other family in the settlement is immed
ately warned Each house has dinner bell, too
post after the style of the old Southern plantations
ringing of the bell in certain way thing and
either faster slower means something else If on
raid of the members of the family lodges the officers
and gets to the bel-often it is boy girl 1.-THE
whole community knows to some degree of certainty
just where the officers and how many in the
posse.
In addition each house has pack of mongrel ours
which rush out and up din at the approach of
stranger. At night they particularly alert
Always Ready for Officers
IN moonshinng settlement nothing is left to chance
So skilled the mounaineers that they tell by
the cries of night birds when their houses being
surrounded Strung through branches of trees and
tops of undebrush wires which the officers disturb
in passing These off bells in the houses, giving
moonshners time to hide their women and children
and prepare for attack.
1t is almost impossible to take house unawares.
Revenue officers have what sometimes seem almost
unsurnountable difficulties to overcome to run the
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