Bisbee daily review., 1919-06-19
BY EDWARD RI. THIERRY Saff Correspondent of N. E. A.

SdIt OoTreSponueht or Ns E. R.
 WASHINGTON, D. C., June 1S - War to the death is raging here at home. Whisky is the issue.
 Blood is being shed in mountain battles. Soon cities will be battle grounds. It's the moonshine war.
 Drama and melodrama enacted in France are duplicated. And all the customary thrills are the wars by product
 Uncle Sam is fighting the moon sinners. Revenue officers, armed men who are the greatest sharp shooters alive, are pitted against an un-numbered army of lawless noun. taineers-desperate men, who fight an Indian style of warfare in defense of what they believe to be their God given right to make whisky out of the corn they grow.
 The hunted moonshiner lies in am. bush and kills his pursuer without a qualm. Its spectacular, picturesque and bloody-this great civil war in which Old John Barleycorn is the central figure and which no peace treaty, no league of nations pact, can stop. Even airplanes are to be used to augment the government forces.
 The law puts whisky in the down and out class July l. Prohibitionists tell us the country goes dry then.
 But anybody who knows anything about the moonshine war will tell you that Uncle Sam is fighting los ing battle against the moonshiners. Half Million Gallons Monthly Liquor
 Output
 The United States will not go dry July 1. Even if prohibition agents could seize and destroy the millions of gallons of legally distilled liquor laid away for arid days there would still be plenty of illicitly distilled whisky to slack the national thirst.
 Moonshiners are making at least half a million gallons of moonshine whisky month right now!
 They've been making whisky illicit ly in increased quantities month by month ever since the legal distillation of whisky ceased on September 8, 1917. .
 After July 1. with the nation theor- etically dry and prices sky high, the output of moonshine will increase enormously.
 Armed revenue agents have been waging the moonshine war for genera tions. Uncle Sam's men have killed and wounded hundreds of moonshin- ora rrha1, bova eanf bupdrodc fO fho penitentiary and have destroyed thou sands of stills"
 This army killed more moonshin- CTS, captured more of them and de- stroyed more stills in the past year than in a score of previous years. And they haven't even put dent in the moonshine industry.
 ''Wildcatting illicit making of whisky-has doubled in the south since the passage of state prohibition laws. oonshiners-otherwise known as "wildcatters"-have their chief habitat in the Appalachian mountains. With them whisky-making is a tradi- tion. matter of heredity-a birth right They cared nothing about the old tax laws. They thought the gov ernment didn't have a right to put a tax on whisky. No more do they care about dry laws.
 Bullets and BUckshot Fly as
 Battle Rages
 Bullets and buckshot pumped into them for decades by Uncle Sam's revenue army have failed to change their convictions. They shoot back, venomously-but they don't shoot quite as straight as the revenue men. Nine-tenths of the casualties in the intending moonshine war are among the moonshiners.
 Mountain moonshining has prodHc- ed millions of gallons of whisky. But it has been a comparatively small business compared to the industry that is taking hold in the cities.
 Moonshine "trusts' are blossoming into being all over the country. A new type of ''wildcatter" Is develop ing. He's not as dangerous an adver- sary as the mountaineer. He's usual ly yellow" reluctant to use a gun and correspondingly afraid of a gun. But the city moonshiner has big fi- nancial backing. He's putting eff ciency and wholesale methods into illicit making.
 The government is planning to re- inforce it's anti-moonshine army. It will probably be doubled. They ex- pect to win in the war against the big moonshiner. But revenue men ad- init they haven't gnost Of a chance