The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1920-12-02
Thursday. December ?, 1920.
THE BOOTLEGclNG BUSINESS
WILL BE STAMPED OUT.

special investigator for Leslie
Weekly has recently reported the re
suit of his findings under the headin
THE Collapse of Prohibition" IL
makes some startling statements re
garding the rum-running fleet oper
ating on the Detroit river through
which the middle west draws its chic
supply from Canada, and states tina
the determined efforts of the author
tiles on both sides have proved inef
fective in stopping the flow of booze
that it is a highly organized business
conducted by the keenest brains; thai
the equipment for the traffic includes
motor trucks. motor boats, fast tour
ing cars. warehouses. arms and am
munition; that the rum-runners
cheat, fight and kill one another, and
that this feature and the danger OF
being caught and imprisoned add zest
to the desperate game. Summing W
his observations the writer in Les
lies says:
1T is estimated that two in
every five homes of the land have
their own private stills or beer
brewing apparatus.
in New York any one with a
friend and the price can obtain
booze by the glass or in quantity.
The same is true of Chicago, St
Louis. Cincinnati San Francisco
all of the larger cities.
Despite the eighteenth amend
ment, there is more drunkenness
in the United States today than
ever before Drinking is done in
secret and surreptitously and
yet the police blotters in nearly
every city reveal an increase in
the number of arrests for drunk
enness
in Philadelphia the police rec
ords show 800 per cent more ar
rests for intoxication from July
to November 1 than for the same
period last year and prior to the
prohibition enactment.
Twenty million quarts of whis-
ky entered the United States from
Canada through Detroit alone,
from January / to September 1 of
this year"
1t is of course a matter of common
knowledge that great many homes
throughout the country have facilities
for making wine, beer and other in
toxicants but it is not believed that |
the ratio is as high as two out Of five.
1t is doubtful if this class Of violators
of the prohibition law will ever be
for there is a sanctity
about ones own home that can not
be ignored except upon strong show
ng of necessity and in the interest of
he public welfare. The man who
iuietly prepares his home brew
strictly for home consumption is of
course violating the prohibition law,
,ut to raid his premises and arrest
linn is a dangerous precedent without
showing that his action is detri-
mental to the welfare of others. While
his class is necessarily included with
d the scope of the law, it is manifest
hat it was not this class that the law
as intended to reach.
1t is the boouegger the man who
the liquor or smuggles
across the line and offers it for
lie, he is the man against whom the
W is directed and he is the man the
W is eventually going to get. Ii
ere are those who think otherwise,
them recall that only a few years
% when the saloon keeper, insolent
his defiance of law and decency
ighed at the efforts of the 'prohi-
ion cranks" TO put him out Of bust
SIS. And yet this very attitude Of
Inference to the demands of law,
,rality and common decency stirred
moral sensibilities of the people
an extent that the so-caiied prohi
ion fanatics finally got the ques-
n submitted to the votes Of the a
,ple and state after state voted the e
uor traffic out of business by over
Ginning majorities, and this was
IN followed b,, the submission of an
to the constitution max T
the nation dry, which was adopted in
an equally decisive majority of the res
ties. That the people of this coun- cab