Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-12
Ten Years of Prohibition
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where 1t had been stored. Here we first
met the ingenuity of the illicit vendor
think they were all known then under
| the inclusive title of bootlegger, but now
we would classify such wholesale OPP
orator as racketeer. He soon learned
how to forge Government permits. He
made his first ventures into the perilous
| field of bribery. He was theatrical. too
and he devised the fake robbery
method for transferring the contents OF
warehouse to more convenient dis
tributing point. Owners of these liquor
stocks submitted to these robberies with
equanimity. secure in the knowledge
that eventually some of the profits
would find their way back
Conspiracy Develops.
1t was extremely difficult for the Gov
eminent to put an end to all this at
once. Conspiracy is VIGOROUSLY hard to
anticipate and even more difficult to
prove later. l remember that some of
! our agents in Pennsylvania received a
| secret tip that warehouse was being
raided. They fastened to the spot and
found the legal guardian summing him
self at the front door, immersed in the
daily paper. At the rear entrance half
dozen vans were slowly filling up with
the contents of this warehouse. Our
friend at the front door was consider
ably disturbed that these Federal agents
had interrupted the serenity of his ex-
istence. He fully intended to discover
the loss later, but not until he knew
the trucks had reached their destina-
ton.
1t took time to do it, but eventually
we stopped this diversion. We took the
permits away from the wholesale liquor
dealers and lodged them in the hands
OF wholesale druggists. / have no de-
sire to draw invidious comparisons be-
tween two classes of citizens, but It is
fair to say that the druggists under
stood the problem better. Even before
prohibition they had had some ex-
perience with regulatory system and
naturally had a finer appreciation of
the law than men who were resentful
because their means of livelihood had
been taken from them.
Forgeries Are Stopped.
Our next step was to take all neces-
sary precautions against counterfeit per-
mits, and we did this by the use of
bonded paper, which even the most in
genious found difficult to initiate. Also
we reduced the number of legal store
houses from 800 to 30, concentrating
these near large centers of population,
where they could be well guarded and
under constant observation of the SUI
perior officers. We stopped the fake
robberies; we stopped the forged and
counterfeit permits, and we made
bribery more hazardous. Thus pre-war
whisky passed away as major
problem.
Rum Row" was our next concern.
That was the day of the Smile limit,
when the liquor vessels from foreign
ports could come almost within hailing
distance OF our shore and ply their
trade. Our Coast Guard at the time
was woefully inadequate to combat law
breaking on such . huge scale and
Rum Row" prospered. But not for
long. Again the ingenuity of the Fed
eral Government met the challenge.
We found ways to strengthen our Coast
Guard through more liberal appropria-
tons, through the conversion of the
thousands of small vessels the Navy
had on its hands at the close of the
war.
Meanwhile our diplomatic representa-
tives were negotiating with foreign gov
ernments, and while other nations did
not view our prohibition experiment
with sympathetic eyes, they were ELL
Clrely unwilling to sanction a wholesale
assault on the laws of friendly nation.
so there followed in due time what are
commonly known as the "twelve-mile
treaties" giving our Coast Guard vessels
the right to stop any suspicious vessel
within an hours sailing from shore and
to embark on hot pursuit" beyond that
imaginary line under certain condi-
tions,
Prosperity Departs.
When all this took place prosperitv
departed from Rum Row" Even the
biggest operators could not risk the loss
OF 100000 every fortnight or so if
heavily loaded schooners ran afoul of
our alert Coast Guard, and the rum
runners in the important harbors soon
were reduced to poverty when they lost
their expensive launches. Coastal
smuggling Is today negligible factor
in the supply of Illicit liquor. There
Is much of it still along the Florida
coast. where the Bahamas offer a con-
venient base of operations, but 1t is in
very small lots, and the flood Is nowhere
near SO great as Winter visitors to
Florida's Fairgrounds would have us
believe
Next? The years seem to merge but
believe the succeeding battle centered
about the bootleggers' drive on our do
nestle supplies Of pure alcohol. Here
we had an extremely delicate and inn
portant problem, for industrial alcohol
had become one of the great basic raw
materials OF thousands of manufacture
ing enterprises. AS recently as 1905
the entire consumption of industrial
alcohol was only 100000 gallons. Now
the annual consumption is between 90 :
100000 and 100,000,000 gallons. MANY
industries are SO dependent on a con-
slant supply that the Government could
not and would not make regulations foo
restrictive. We could not regard every
application with suspicion. We could
not take the chance of sending a Iegiti-
mate industry into bankruptcy bv an
arbitrary refusal to let 1t Withdraw
alcohol.
Fake Industries Set Tn.
While we gave cur attention tn this
delicate problem the bootlegeers nlied
their trade. They found methods of
circumventing the permit system. They
established fake industries. They
evaded the regulations concerning de-
maturing. They did manage to divert
great many gallons Of pure alcohol
from factories to cellars and Innocent
appearing farmhouses, whence it later
emerged as pre-war or imported gin.
But think can boast that we have
stopped that, and I bestow the credit
not particularly on the Federal agencies
charged with the problem, but ON
American industry, which periodically
ana Whoie-neartedly co-Operated with
the Government in putting an end to
law violation. Our problem was to And
denaturants which would make pure AL
coflol UNFIT for beverage purposes, with
out at the same time injuring its in
dustrial value. Scientists and tech
nologists employed by the industries
have co-operated fully with the Gov
ernment's own experts, and we have
made what / regard as marvellous con-
tributions to scientific knowledge. We
have even discovered denaturants which