Newspaper Page Text
BOOTLEG LIQUOR
(Cuntinued from page 1)
L the > ar. In the rear was a larger room with four pool tables, and probably
t men were in there. Pool balls were clicking, there was loud
It "iking . young and the air thick %vith tobacco smoke. We
and lau S hter - was stepped
L t0 the bar. I learned one elbow on it, put a foot upon the brass rail and
L i to look as if that was one of my regular habits. The bartender, with a
['Ti ' a . )ltm stood on, waiting swabbed for the the top order. of the Bill bar held in up front two of fingers us with and a said: dirty cloth
t f 1 l hen pints.”
1 “Two half
**Hev, Pete,” yelled the bartender toward the pool hall in the rear and a
ng man came out, ' Two half pints, Pete.” Pete went back through the poffi
' ■ ou vanished into the back yard. In minute he
a ll and a came back and handed
two half pints of white whisky. I gave the boy a five-dollar bill and he gave
lie three dollars in change. This was all' done openly, in front of the bar in
ight of fifteen or twenty men and boys.
For the Drinker Who Wants Quick Results
Coming away Bill said that this kind of whisky was known
because it made a man wild. He thought it was moonshine whisky
in V irginia. He knew it sold corn made
by farmers over was in dozens of places all around
that quarter, within shadow of a Catholic church across the street and
government Printing Office, the post office and Union ’ the n
and then don’t Station
"A drink of it now seem to hurt a fellow much but about
L ree drinks will knock a man out,” Bill remarked.
The analysis showed that it was raw spirits heavily loaded with fusel
Ld and the chemist wrote at the foot of nil
L esters, his analysis: “This quality '
liquor would cause quick intoxication.” , ‘
I Next I called upon a friend from the West who is head of
epartment. After a little talk about old times I broached a government
ordered whisky delivered the subject of whHkv
de said he never at his office because he did not want
he clerks to see bootleggers coming and going. We agreed that he would
jave the whisky delivered to us at noon in the office of a friend in a building
n the center of the retail shopping district of Washington. My friend drew
tis desk telephone to him, called a number and said: “This is 203. Deliver oik,
red at 12:30 today to-” and he gave the office number.
He explained that he had just called the office of a firm of bootleggers
Uting of three young men who were getting rich con
Lx at that business They had
men delivering whisky to all parts of the city and gave twenty-four-hour
That Lrvice. Each customer was given a number and the bootlegging firm had
number entered in a book with the customer’s name and address. Thus,
then look my friend said, number "This 203 is 203,” the who bootlegger had simply to look in his
Leant at the serial to see was placing the order. “One red”
one bottle of rye whisky, “one white” would have meant a bottle of gin
tiid "one smoke” would have meant a bottle of Scotch whisky.
tVe went to the appointed place and at half past twelve a young man in
waterproof topcoat came in briskly carrying a lawyer’s leather brief case,
ijy P tr i,. n d recognized him at once and spoke to him.
' it was the first time I had ever seen a real bootlegger, to know him, and
watched him curiously. He was a quiet, serious-looking young man. Several
. en were i n the office but he paid no attention to them. He opened the brief
las.- and took out a quart bottle. I paid him twelve dollars fo|r it. There were
Ilnee other bottlete like it in the case. He closed and strapped his brief case
lad without having spoken I a want word, he to started take to go out. and I give followed him to
fcie door and saidi: "Here, you my name me a num
Jer.” He did so. said, My number walked is 482. toward the hotel, “I had idea they sold it
"Well," 1 as we walked right in and opened no
lo openly here. Why, he up as i fhe weijt- selling
legitimate goods.” bold,” answered friend. “Some time this particular
L -yes, they’re my ago
m had some trouble and had to change offices and telephone number. So.
|h,-v sent printed notices to their customers, just like any business house
vould and told of the change, gave the new telephone number and wound up
' expeditious, twenty-four hour service and
j jir • \V e will continue the same
Eigh P quality of goods as valued in the orders past. in Thanking the future.’ you ” for past favors we solicit
continuance of your
A Visit to a Regular Bootlegger
This bottle bore a label and a “bottled in bond” strip over the cork that
eerned genuine. It was “Old Lewis Hunter Rye Whisky” made in Kentucky
the spring of 1914 and bore a wreath made of heads of rye, and an American
Lgle with outspread wings and a streamer in his bill telling that it was made
funder government supervision at Lair, Ky.”
“Yes, that is pure stuff,” my friend said, and he told me the old story of
is being bottled for export, shipped to the Bahamas and smuggled back into
his country.
The chemist found that it w'as whisky, but it contained an unuusualiv
Li-ge quantity of fusel oil, indicating that it was new, raw spirits that had
level been aged in wood; therefore, it could not have been made in 1914.
The chemist made the following comment upon this sample: “It certainly
eems that raw liquor like this is not safe for use.”
That afternoon I called upon an old acquaintance, a politician from a
k’estern State who maintained an office in Washington while lobbying some
(is ting through Congress. I shook hands and as there were several persons in
office I started to go, but he detained me with: “Don’t go. Stick around,
I’ve got some good whisky coming up.’
I waited, and in a fiew minutes a young man cine in, quiet and business¬
like, |ottle as the other had been, with a breif case in his hand, and he delivered a
of the “Old Lewis Hunter Rye Whisky” with the same label, spread
agle and all. . 1
Later I went to the Senate Office Building to call upon a friend and he
lulled open a drawer of his desk, took out a bottle, patted it lovingly and said:
[Here’s a bottle of the real old stingo. Pure prewar stuff. There isn’t much of
left in this country. I cherish it highly—keep it for my friends from out west”
Ie was the same “Old Lewis Hunter Rye Whisky,” with the same flying
gle on its yellow label.
Late that afternoon I called upon a newspaper correspondent from the
feat and I told him why I was in Washington.
“Anyone can get all the booze he wants in Washington if he knows the
opes. How would you like to visit a regular bootlegger in his lair?” he asked.
We went in a taxicab to a house of stone and brick. Dusk was falling
ud a mellow light streamed out through rich lace curtains. We went up the
leps and rang the bell. A woman opened the door. My friend greeted her
'ith a cheery, “Hello, Mabel,” and as we w-ent in he said, "This is the
[everend Mr. Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister from out West; he wants
bottle of gin.”
I She laughed as she led the w-ay through the hall and into the dining room.
You’re not kidding me, for we have more than one preacher on our list.’
k said.
We stood at the dining room table while she went into the kitchen. She
f“ lle out with a square quart bottle of Gordon gin. It was five dollars. As
e Passed through the hall again her husband came down stairs. I was intro
ked. He shook hands cordially and said: “Glad to know you, Mr. Mao
pnuld; come again any old time.”
I *bere,” axclaimed the correspondent as we drove away. “Those are
Pical Washington bootleggers. He used to be a government clerk. He rte
gned an d went to bootlegging. He has several men delivering for him. That
aide is in the heart of the best residence district of Washington. The French
nd Mexican embassies within four blocks. The home of Mrs. John B.
are
tenderson, which she has just offered to give the Government as a residence
Jr the vice presidents, is only three blocks There are scores of boot
away.
•86'is living that way right among the good people here.”
Driving down Sixteenth Street he pointed out one of the best family-apart
lent buildings in Washington, and said he knew that four different apartments
61 e " ere occupied by bootleggers.
The chemist found that this bottle of gin was not genuine. It was “syn
e *' Kin, made of flavored with juniper oil.
raw T alcohol and water
ih.it night I was taken to a well-known Washington club. “You don’t
an t0 tne that get booze here?” I exclaimed to my guide.
you can
* ot with the knowledge of the club, but I can connect you here with a
exclusive society bootlegger who handles only a very fine old Scotch
hlsk >‘” he replied.
L The bottle delivered was labeled: "Mackinlay’s V. O. B. Finest Select'd
"’ li Whisky as Supplied to the Houses of Parliament.”
i Tiu "as stained yellow-, if with and spotted. The boot
as age. was
* ''plained that this came from the splashing of salt water as the liquor
llM udit in sacks in motorboat from the Bermudas to port in Florida,
^ a a
L. e the Porter of a Pullman car smuggled it. a few- bottles each trip, to
Washington.
rpi obrniist’s
comment upon this whisky, made for “the Houses of Par
nt ’ " us: ‘ Probably this diluted.”
j is a factitious liquor
The Jitney Drivers Know
L la '* ^ Jeen in Washington only a day and had collected five bottles of liquor
i u ,.; t ;V nUCh ' * d ’^ effort - 1 could have gone on. no doubt, gathering bottles from
^ e,ent bootleggers, for abtaining it open
pg front new' avenues were
sidl?s - but I had enough from Washington.
g 1 W night I hatf
departed for Richmond, Virginia, and arrived there at
m COVINGTON NEWS, COYlNCTi^, GEORGIA
past seven the next morning. On my way uptown I asked the taxicab driver
if he knew where I might get a bottle of whisky.
“Almost any of the jitney drivers with care for hire will drive you to
where you can get it,” he said.
At one of the hotels in Richmond the darky bell boy got me a pint bottle
of "white lightning,” a liquor colorless as water, which the chemist said was
“hooch,” dangerous to drink.
After breakfast 1 went into the street and the first “For Hire" automobile
I found at the curb offered to sell me “corn,” but 1 already had some of that
and wanted “bottled in bond” liquor. He directed me to a billurd hall where
he said 1 would find Ragland, who sold Imported stuff. Ragland had “just
stepped out” from the billiard hall, and T started to go out when a young man
said to me: “1 can get you some hooch if that’s what you’re after.” I said I
wanted real Scotch and he directed me to look for Ragland in a certain drug
store. There I was directed to another billiard hall just beyond the corner on
Broad Street, but Ragland had left there “not two minutes ago” for his garage.
In this place three different young men. finding that I was looking for Ragland,
offered to sell me “hooch.” A fourth told me he had some fine “Jackass
brandy,” a liquor distilled from peaches, that he could sell for four dollars a
quart
All of this occurred in the very heart of the shopping district of Richmond,
where three theatres and two business colleges are within a half block. I was
a stranger, yet in ten minutes six different bootleggers had offered to sell nr
liquor. At his garage 1 found Ragland, a tall young man with a florid face and
expensive clothing. When l told him I was a traveling man he was affable.
Standing on the sidewalk we had quite a talk. He said his Scotch was im¬
ported through Savannah and he kept his stock at a house thirty-five miles out
from Richmond. He was just getting ready to go out and get a load.
$75,000 Since Prohibition
“I am a wholesaler and can’t afford to fool with one bottle. I’ll call one of
my retailers and he’ll sell you a quart,” he said.
He went into the garage and called up and then came out and directed
me to the home of another man.
“Fred knows you’re coming and will sell you a bottle of good Scotch fo,
sixteen dollars,” he explained.
“He ought to get rich at that price,” I emmented.
“Fred has made $75,000 at it since prohibition went into effoet,” Ragland
answered.
Fred’s home was an old-fashioned brick house with an ornamental cast
iron fence in front. A man met me at the door and showed me into a front
room, where a coal fire was blazing in a grate. He sold me a bottle of “Old
Highland Queen Whisky,” said to have been made by Macdonald & Muir and
bottled at Leith, Scotland. The chemist found about half as much fusel oil
in it as was in the “hooch” the darky sold me.
I drifted into the Hustings Court in the city hall, where the only person
in sight was .an elderly man with gray hair and a kindly fa^e, sitting by a table
smoking a pipe. He was David C. Richardson, judge of that court, and, as I
afterward learned, a man revered and loved by the people of Richmond. I toid
him who 1 was and asked him what he thought of prohibition, between puffs
of his pipe he said this:
“I am glad for the chance to say a word for prohibition through The La¬
dies’ Home Journal, and to warn the women voters of this land not to he mis¬
led by the campaign for wine and beer. That is the old saloon crowd trying
to get hack into the saddle. I have been for nearly half a century in public
life here—eighteen years as police justice, ten years as commonwealth attorney,
four years as mayor of Richmond, ten years on the bench of this court, which
has jurisdiction in criminal oases. I have seen and know the effects of drink
It is a curse. Prohibition is a godsend. It can be enforced. Already it has cut
down crime one-half. It has reduced the average population of our jail from
300 to 150. What would this country have done since the war if the saloons
had all been open? Prohibition saved us from anarchy and chaos. About fifty
bootleggers a month corme before me, and—oh, the pity of it.—all are young
white men. They are killing people. Our city chemist. Doctor Whitfield, has
testified here many times that thr whisky taken from bootleggers was danger¬
ous. Tell the people to stop drinking it and bootlegging will go out of fashion.
Tell the women to help enforce prohibition if they want to better humanity.’
I found Dr. James M. Whitfield, coroner and chemist. In his office were
hundreds of samples of bootleg whisky he had analyzed. Much of it came from
homemade stills with coils of lead pipe. The alcohol, seeping through it, took
up acetate of lead, a poihon. He showed me a sample of bootleg whisky that
had killed an old Confederate soldier. It was full of acetate of lead that came
from such a pipe. Those crudely distilled liquors were full of fusel oil and
other harmful things.
Heaving Richmond that aftei noon a traveling man came into the Pullman
car and took the seat opposite mine. He took a pint bottle of whisky from his
hip pocket, held it up for me to see, winked and said. “Nice-looking package hey?”
I nodded.
“We’ll crack it aft^er a, while,” he said and dropped it into his hand hag.
After the train started he picked up his hag and beekonled to me and we went
into the smoking compartment. “I got it at a drug store in Richmond,” he
said. “I had no doctor’s prescription. I have no trouble getting it at drug
stores. I just go in and put up a little talk, look thirsty and give the S O S
sign and they generally come across.”
♦
Another traveling man on the train had a pint of whisky he had bought at
a drug store in Norfolk.
“Scat” arid “Happy Sally”
Next morning, at Alexandria, Virginia, I found that the police had raided
the Black Cat saloon, had arrested three bootleggers and confiscated a lot of
liquor, but I had no trouble in finding another bootlegger still at large. He
was lounging on a corner, with his hands in his pocketls. Something about
him led me to think he was a bootlegger. I sauntered up and said, “That’s a
pretty old house there, I reckon.”
“They say that’s the oldest frame house in America. Washington learned
to dance there.” he replied. After some little maneuvering he transferred a
half pint of booze from his overcoat pocket to minfe. I paid him a dollar and
went on my way.
It was what the chemist called “factitious,” or sham whisky, “strong in al
cohol but not fit to drink.”
That afternoon I went by motorbus from Washington to Frederick, Mary¬
land. On the way I became acquainted with a merchant of that tow r n who
rode w-ith me on the back seat, and after w r e reached Frederick he went w-ith
me to a house in a respectable neighborhood where a man sold me a quart of
“Old Horsy” whisky for twelve dollars.
Later the chemist reported that it was fairly good whisky; but a bottle of
rye whisky I bought in another home there was a poor quality of hoooch
unfit to be drunk.
I wanted a sample of the liquor known as “scat" whisky sold in
to the oyster fishermen of the Chesapeake, and I went there and bought a
quart of it for six dollars in a saloon on the water front. It was sleeting
day and the place was filled w-ith men drinking. I had no trouble getting it. I
simply asked for it and paid for it over the bar and walked out.
The day before Federal officers had raded a moonshine still on a farm near
Baltimore, which was maikng 1000 gallons of liquor a day. They said the still
had a lead-pipe coil.
Later the chemist found that the quart of “scat” whisky I had bought
there was loaded with acetate of lead, not enough to kill a man outright, but
enough to poison him badly if he drank it regularly.
Liquor is sold in saloons all along the water front in Philadelphia. From
one I obtained a bottle of “Happy Sally” booze, and from another a half pint
of “Jump Steady,” both of which are favrite brands with the laborers. They
cost only fifty cents a half pint, and. as two good-sized drinks are enough to
make a man “jump.” it costs no more to become drunk now than it did in
the old times before prohibition.
Easy lo Buy Near University
The chemist said of those two samples: “You will note that this hooch
has a high )>er rent of alcohol. It has plenty of strength, although no charac¬
ter. Personally. I believe this hooch is dangerous.”
The most deadly sample I obtained in Philadelphia was from a dive on
South Eleventh Street, w-here an old woman, wrinkled and bent and ill. opened
a street door into a narrow hallway. She stooped and rolled aside an old rug,
then lifted a trap door and went down a ladder into a black cellar that smelled
damp and musty and foul. I could hear her coughing down there as she
fumbled around. She came up clutching by the neck a quart soda-pop bottle
(Continued on page 7 )
GRAPES
Rich, ripe, healthful grapes,
grown in the famous vineyards
of Southern Europe — produce
the cream of tartar from which
Royal Baking Powder is made.
The most eminent authorities
in the world say cream of tartar
makes the best and most health¬
ful baking powder.
ROYAL
Baking Powder
The ONLY nationally distributed
Cream of Tartar Baking Powder
Contains No Alum — Leaves No Bitter Taste
Before that tired feeling saps your energy
come in and get a Spring Tonic.
Has overeating and lack of exercise in the
winter, clogged your system?
If so, ome in and get our bracing SPRING
TONIC. It will build up your system and put
“Pep” in your entire body.
We are Careful Druggists
Pennington Drug Co.
SUCCESSOR TO
GEO. T. SMITH DRUG COMPANY
J. I. GUINN’S CASH STORE
NEW GOODS OF SEASON ARRIV¬
ING EVERY FEW DAYS
SPOT CASH!
ONE PRICE!
BIG VALUES!
SHOES OUR SPECIALTY
J. I. GUINN
COVINGTON GEORGIA
DON’T WAIT TOO LONG TO ARRANGE FOR CASH
TO MAKE YOUR 1923 CROP
I can loan you money on your farm lands. Six per cent interest for 5 years.
Also twenty year loan on Government plan.
L. W. JARMAN
Office in Star Building, Covington, Ga.