Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-09-13

WASHINGTON, d. c., Sept. 9.--In the recent
w roundup of illicit whisky distillers in our
southern mountain districts said to De tne
greatest ever undertaken by the government, IouI
teen 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 on the western
'front.' but here it is simply taken for granted
The internal revenue agent has always been taken
for granted, and probably always will be the whis
ky tax eyaders, who recognize him as an inevitable
calamity, by the law-abidiDg public, which hears
only vaguely of his exploits. and by the movie
scenario writer, who frequently exploits
Occasionally you hear that the government"
has raded certain suspected districts, capturing
a hundred illicit stills, but the names of the
men engaged in these raids their biographies and
their photographs, are published. For
the internal revenue agent faces many dangers in
the transaction of government business, but none
is quite great the possibility of becoming
known. He fears publicity more than he does
"squirrel-hUnter's" gun.
That is why very few people know that the
casualty list of the internal service is rel
ativey large Few have been killed, but the gov
eminent has had to create a special fund to pay
the hospital expenses of internal revenue agents
wounded in the performance of their duty. In
the recent raid the revenue men escaped, but five
outlaws and two sheriffs were killed. Only after
a severe fight the moonshine property cap
tured by the government, totalling 100000
worth of dstilling apparatus, $1,000 pounds of
sugar and 900 gallons of pale mountain
whisky. The last was promptly poured down the
mountain rills.
All the stills captured were being operated in
prohibition states Prohibition according to in
ternal revenue men, always causes large boom
in the moonshining business Men who have been
accustomed to alcoholic drinks are suddeny de-
prved of them, the nearest source Of supply some
times moving from the store around the corner
to a point fifty miles away. Usually, they have no
of importing them into dry" section
There is only one way of getting liquor and that
is TO make it,
1t is very simple. In some sections of the
rural south the women make the familys supply
of alcoholic beverages. An internal revenue Of
fcer visiting suspected district In the gulse OF
a peddler one summer collected sufficient evidence
to convict over fifty different families of this prac
tice He would appear at the farmhouse in the
heat of mid-afternoon and claim that he was about
to faint from weakness after a long tramp over
the mountains The mountain farmers, who are
very kindly and hospitable people, would invari-
ably doctor him with drink of unlabeled whisky.
and the revenue officer would be compelled to add
one more name to his list of law-breakers
. To the people of the rural mountain districts,
who rarely a railroad train or newsstand or
a public library, the government is a remote and
vague institution. Separated from the rest of the
world by rugged natural boundaries, they live in
a provincial atmosphere of their own. Thus ttelr
private manufacture of alcoholic beverages is not
always deliberate attempt to break the law.
They simply cannot why the government
should tax them for product made by their own
hands from apples corn grown on their own
lands And when the agent, in the form of the
internal revenue officers, appears TO investigate
they challenge it's right with guns.
This summer internal revenue officer hap
pened to spend the night in a mountain town on
HIS way across the boundary of a southern state.
1t was Saturday night and the streets were hlled
with men from the neighboring farms mere
was not bar in the town, which had been dry for
a couple of years; there was no concrete evidence
of alcoholic drinks anywhere, bust 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 internal revenue omcer was
interested in that mountain.