The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-09-12
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORM ALTON
BUREAU
FREDERIC J. HAEKN, Director.
washinstcrs. d. q
THE SPREAD OF MOUNTAIN DEW
Washington. D. G.

THE SPREAD OF MOUNTAIN DEW.
Washington, D. c.. Sept. s.-In the
recent roundup of illicit whisky dis
tiIlers in our southern mountain dis
tricts. said to be thesgreatest ever un-
dertaken by the government. fourteen
internal revenue agents caused the
arrest of 200 moonshiners and seized
4S6 stills. =
This is a record OF capture which
would be worthy of honorable mention
even on the western front. but over
here it is simply taken for granted.
The internal revenue agent has always
always will be by the whisky tax
evaders, who recognize him as an
| inevitable calamity, by the law-abid-'
ing public which hears only vaguely
| Of his exploits, and by the movie
| scenario writer, who frequently ex-
| ploits.
Occasionally you hear that the gov
| eminent has raided certain suspected
I districts, capturing a hundred or SO
| illicit stills, but the names Of the men
| engaged in these raids, their biograph-
| les and their photographs, are never
| published. For the internal revenue
agent faces many dangers in the trans
| action of government business, but
| none is quite SO great as the pos
sibility of becoming known. He fears
|
rel-hunter's" gun.
That is why very few people know
| that the casualty list of the internal
revenue service is relatively large.
Few have been killed, but the govern
| ment has had to create a special fund
to pay the hospital expenses of in
| ternal revenue agents wounded in the
performance of their duty. In the
! recent raid the revenue men escaped,
| but five outlaws and two sheriffs were
/ IyS nr1tx~ f%4y~ Htrvt.<
| the moonshine property captured by
| the government, totalling $4,000
! worth of distilling apparatus, $1,000
| pounds of sugar and 10000 gallons Of
pale mountain whisky. The last was
(, promptly poured down the mountain
| rills.
All the stills captured were being
operated in prohibition states. Pro-
hibition, according to internal revenue
men, always causes a large boom in
the noonshining business. Men who
have been accustomed to alcoholic
drinks are suddenly deprived of them,
the nearest source of supply some
the corner to a point fifty miles away.
i Usually, they have no means of i'm
porting them into a dry" section.
There is only one way of getting
/ liquor, and that is to make it.
| 1t is very simple. In some sections
/
the family's supply of alcoholic bev-
erages.N An internal revenue officer
| visiting suspected district in the
guise of a peddler one summer. col
lected sufficient evidence to convict
over fifty different families of this
practice. He would appear at the
| farmhouse in the heat of r1id-after-
noon and claim that he was about to
faint from weakness after a long
tramp over the mountains. The
1 a " nd
| ly and hospitable people. would ',s-
| variably doctor him with a drink of
unlabeled whisky, and the revenue
officer would be compelled to add one
more name to his list of w-breakers.
To the people of the rural mountain
districts, who rarely see a railroad
train or a news stand or a public Ii
brary, the government is a remote
and vague institution. Separated
from the rest of the world by rugged
natural boundaries, they live entirely
in a provincial atmosphere of their
own. Thus their private manufacture
of alcoholic beverages is not always a
deliberate attempt to break the law.
| They simply cannot see why the gov
eminent should tax them for a prod
uct made by their own~hands from
apples or corn grown on their own
lands. And when the government, in
GERS, appears to investigate, they chal-
lenge Its right with guns. -
This summer an internal revenue
officer happened to spend the night
in a, mountain town on his way across
the boundary of a southern state. II
was Saturday night, and the streets
were filled with men from the neigh
boring farms There was not a bar
in the town, which had been dry for a
couple of years; there was no concrete
evidence OF alcoholic drinks anywhere
but most of the men were obviously
drunk. The internal revenue officer
decided to remain in that town. A
tall, heavily timbered mountain rose
abruptly to the left of it, and the in.
in that mountain.
;. A few days later he stood on q
ledge halfway up the mountain, his
eyes fixed on a point near the tor
, from which issued a thin cloud OF
, smoke. Suddenly. a mountaineer ir
, blue overalls appeared from behind q
tree, carrying a shotgun.
"Lookin' for, anything" challenged
| the mountaineer.
AUST for trout stream they told
eminent agent innocently. Say, tina
| looks like bad fire you've got W
, there"
.Lightnin. struck there the othe,
night explained the mountaineer
''but it don't amount to much"
: brief silence ensued. Then: 81
you're lookiny for trout, there's RICH
smart over on the other mountain
he continued
: A week later the internal revenu,
, officer was nursing bandaged arm
in a distant hospital; five mountainee
moonshiners were in the local jail
: and the fire had gone out on thu
' mountain.
Women moonshiners are not un
|
s to trace, according to the revenu
, ! agents. They differ from the farm
ers' wives who put up so-calle'
grape juice and blackberry cordial TO
!. family use in that they make liquo
v to sell, fully aware that they ar
breaking the law and prepared to re
sist it. Some Interesting stories o