Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-09-29
BY HENRY IRVING DODGE

into USE it taken in small quantities and by few
persons There law against it, at that time;
but this evaded by introducing the drug into patent
medicines got up expressly vehicles for It, Through
these remedies the growth of the trade became abso
lutey appalling.
In ali the lower districts of the city where the drug
obtained the streets used to be Uttered with thou
sands of little empty paper cartons or boxes labeled with
various cold and catarrh remedies
The pioneer in the cocaine forming habit the
maker of catarrh powder, combination of cocaine
and little menthol with sugar of milk base This
blown up the with a small glass blower. The
first effect exhilaraton; but this subsidized and
then the victim had to have and more. The drug
gis did make great deal these patent mixtures
but he soon saw that the makers profit was enormous
and determined to manufacture his own stuff. Some
times he sold the pure cocane again. he dispensed it
mixture with mentho and sugar of milk in solution
with anpyrin Curously, the effect of the mixture of
cocaine and antpyrn discovered by layman, and
spread like wildre. Cocaine then bought at
and half grain and sold at average of five
cents, and there was an enormous trade in it.
DURING the reign of king Cocaine there was
- decent young chap named who belonged to gen
tie folk He had been brought up in strictly moral
home. His early training had been religious and whole
His friends had booked him for "bg things in
the drug trade But some unaccounable thing got into
him, he left the first class neghborhood in which his
thriving business was located and went to Second
and opened up shop to make easy money by
Substitution. He used to sell molasses for malt
tract; the costing seventy-fve cents pint, the
with washing soda and tartarc acid, instead OF using
ctrc acid and carbonate of magnesia and thus saved
sixty per cent. the COST This mixture was harmless
but it also Intellectual.
While these profits enormous, they served only
whe rather than to satisfy the greed of young
friend. He abandoned Second-ave., moved into the
Chinatown district and began selling cocaine and
opium His was instantaneous. From the time
he opened his store in the morning till he closed at night
there line of customers at the counter buying the
drug. The profits enormous, and B soon became
known the Cocaine King. In short time he
cleared seventy-fve thousand dollars Then he began
to buy property in the Bronx.
Near the end of BIS reign the Bowery another
who had been agent for a big catarrh powder
house. and knew how to manufacture and SELL had gone
into the business for himself In year he cleared
sixty thousand dollars from the remedies he handed out
from one small room. But for sometime this man had
been sleeping with his to the ground He heard the
rumblings of an approaching moral upheaval. Some
thing warned him to get out quickly. He took the
Cocaine King to the warehouse, showed him huge
stack of boxes of goods and offered to close out at
figure The king took the whole lot off his hands,
and the other Immediately left for Europe for his health
Then the storm burst. For time all but the very
boldest lay low and waited. But the temptation was
great for the King He continued almost brazeny
to sell the drug. He first warned, and then fined
But too much confidence in politicians proved to be his
undoing. The agents of an adverse administration got
him with the goods on" his pull failed him at the
crucial moment, and he landed on Blackwels Island
When he was in prison. his shop in Chinatown
sold out and after being released he went up to the
Bronx opened new store and tried to reestab1Sh HIM
self IN legitimate way But his past SINS ana ms dis
grace preyed upon his mind that day he dropped
dead from sheer heartbreak.
The law against cocaine not due much to any
great moral movement the uninitated may imagine
but economic motive. The liquor dealers traced
the loss of great deal of trade to this habit. They
aroused public feeling, labeled it @Moral Movement,
and got law passed making felony to sell cocaine
except prescription. AS result of this law large
proportion of the smaller druggists who depended on this
traffic for living driven out of business
PUT, unfortunately laws cannot drug
ends One day not long after the act had been put