The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-09-28
By WILLIS THORNTON Democrat Washington
 COrpesnOndeutl

COffcSpOnOemtl Washington, Sept. 28 - There is genuine prospect that "Rum Row. as 1t was known in prohibition days may be a thing of the past. The various treasury agencies CO., ordinated under direction of Harold Graves, assistant to the secretary have turned on the heat" to such extent that smuggling of illegal liquor has, for practical purposes, been cut to nothing at all. Something like year ago, when treasury agencies, such as the coast guard, alcohol tax division, customs men, secret service, inter- nal revenue agents, and narcotic agents, were placed under co-ordi- nation of Graves, liquor estimated at 100000 gallons a year was being smuggled into the country from abroad. .Ia...' ....
 Now the flood of illegal liquor is believed to be not more than a fifth of that, perhaps less, and cer- tainly a trickle that is robbing the country of less than 3 million dol lars a year in revenue and affect- ing the liquor market rot at all. Coordination of treasury. agen- cics under Graves into Treasury Police" force numbering nearly 13,OOO men is certainly responsible for a great deal of this curbing of smuggling.
 Agreements reached with snug glers' bases such as St. Pierre Mi auelon, Belize, St. Johns, and Cuba, to prohibit exports obviously des- tined for smugglers' trade, has done the rest. The romance" of Rum Row is pretty much a thing of the past. .,. Plan Goes Over-Big!
 Point of the coordination of treasury agencies, in which Sec retary Morgenthau has taken an active part and interest, is this: liauor smugglers are almost always mixed up in dope smuggling, im- migrant smuggling, and domestic distribution of both.
 Hence, to have the heads Of the various forces concerned with those things meet weekly under the eye and direction of co-ordinator was logical step that made them all more effective. It has worked-in great big way.
 Graves, the lean, tanned. energe- tic man who sits in a plain offlce across the street from the White House, so close that you could toss peanuts over to the squirrels on the presidential lawn, doesn't put out much on the details.
 But here's the kind of co-ordina- tion, outlined by other treasury of- ficials, which has brought grief to Rum Row:
 Radio technicians of the alcohol tax unit of the treasury were inter cepting message from an unlicensed land station to what turned out to be British rum smuggler. The decoded messages showed that the ship was some SO miles off shore and the station was somewhere north of Boston. So the radio men moved into that vicinity and inter- cepted some more messages.
 "FOx" the Smugglers
 They obtained cooperation of the coast guard and local highway po- lice. They ran down the unlicensed station in a private house in a lit- tie Maine town. Then officers raided the station just as the oper- ator was sending message to the rum ship.
 One of the government men sim- ply sat down at the key and contin- ued to send messages to the rum ship, using the same code, which had previously been deciphered. They told the ship to be at cer- tain place at a certain time.
 It was. A coast guard cutter was waiting for it. Result: Eight of crew arrested, 5000 gallons of ille- gal (and .untaxed) alcohol seized, and a clear trail uncovered to a big Boston smuggling syndicate. Six radio trucks, capable of rum ming up and down the coast to any needed point, have opened to gov- ernment ears practically all the ra- dio conversation between rum ships and their land contacts.
 Messages can be relayed to decod- ing points and back again so fast that you (and the rum runners) would be surprised.
 System Hard to Beat
 Further, the treasury's contacts with ports of shipment of illegal li- quor have been perfected to the point where 1t is little exaggeration to say that Graves knows to the gallon where every bit of liquor is destined for the smuggling trade.
 And when 10000 coast guards men, 250 narcotic agents, 1900 men of the alcohol tax unit, 150 customs agents. $50 border pa trolmen, 18O secret service men, and some 200 men of the intelli- gence unit of the Internal Revenue Bureau are all turned loose as needed from a central direction, it is usually just too bad for the smugglers.
 And that Is why Rum Row, the picturesque creature of prohibition days, is practically a legend to-day. Copyright, 1885, NEA Service, Inc.