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SQUIREEDGEGATE— — Just For Old Time's Sake We Reproduce Here a “Pickled” Guy BV LOUIS RICHARD
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BOOTLEG LIQUOR
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filled with liquor.
It cost only three dollars and was dear at that, for the analysis showed
it had been redistilled from denatured alcohol and still held enough of iso-propyl
alcohol to kill a man if he drank muc-h of it. The man who went with me to
that place said that two drinks of that liquor had paralyzed his tongue so he
icould not speak, and had put him into a stupor from which he did not recover
ifor nearly two hours.
A pint of whisky bought at a saloon on Locust street was hooch, unsafe
[to drink.
To see if liquor could be bought in the sjection of West Philadelphia where
(students at the University of Pennsylvania live, I went there and chose a drug
'store at random. I went in and told the druggist I was going to call on a family
in the neighborhood and would like a little liquor to take along to make the
visit a merry one. He sold me for five dollars a quart bottle of gin, an exact
duplicate of the one 1 bought in Washington, and the analysis of it yielded
the same resutl; it was “factitious.”
Sunday afternoon I went to a news stand near the Broad Street Station of
jthje Pennsylvania Railroad. I remarked to the newsman that if I was back
home I would be able to get something to drink. He said if I would wait a
‘few minutes, until his bootlegger friend came back, I could get all I wanted.
I waited, and bootleggers fairly swarmed around me. One wanted to lead me
o a near-by drug store. Another urged me to “step over to my room on San
'om Street” for a quart of the real thing. A third plucked me by the elbow,
ook me to one side and warned me that the liquor handled by the other two
vas “dynamite.”
“I’ll take you to a regular saloon where you can get real whisky at eight
ollars a quart,” he said. I took down the name and address, went theie Mon
ay morning and bought a pint of Mt. Vernon Rye Whisky. The label read
'For medical purposes only.” The analysis found it to be a poor quality ot
ooeh, badly diluted.
1 returned to Washington and interviewed James M. Doran, head of the
ndustrial Alcohol and Chemical Division of the Prohibition Unit. There is
pace to repeat only a few of his statements, among them the following:
“Last year we analyzed 40,000 samples of liquors seized by the Govern
rent in all parts of the country. Only two per cent were genuine; ninety
ight per cent were Imitations and unfit to drink, Tl|e majority were poisonous.
irtualty no liquor is coming into this country from Scotland, England or Con
inental Europe. All of the stuff smuggled in by rum runners is bad raw a.l
ohol made in Cuba from blackstrap molasses, then shipped to Nassau, where
is colored and flavored. All brands are made from the same vat and bottled
tinder counterfeit labels and sent into the United States. The Scotch is this
lcohol flavored with creosote to give it a smoky tang. It is all worse than
he old-time ‘squirrel’ whisky, so called because it was calculated to make a
nan climb a tree. The rum-running business is all built on this Cuban alcohol,
doubt if you can buy a bottle of genuine Scotch whisky in the United States
t any price. •
“Another source of supply is industrial alcohol denatured with various
oisons to prevent its use as a beverage. Alcohol that is to be used in making
erfumes, toilet preparations and barbells’ supplies is denatured by putting into
t acetate, which lacerates the stomach; or iso-propyl alcohol, which paralyzes
he nerve centers; or brucine sulphate, a poison so deadly that the Government,
n its instructions for denaturing alcohol, prints th|s warning: ‘Caution: Use
xtreme care in tasting the brucine sulphate.’ Yet since prohibition 1200 firms
ave been organized in New York City alone to manufacture hair tonics, bay
um and face washes, withdrawing this denatured alcohol and redistilling it and
elling it through bootleggers. Their crude methods of redistillation leave
nough of the original poisons in the stuff to make it extremely dangerous
o drink.”
Over a New York Bar
Another source of illicit booze is moonshine stills. This stuff is as dangerous
3 *Be others. It is loaded with aldehydes, the cause of so many moonshine
vaths, in which the breath is shut off and the victim chokes and smothers to
t-ath while the heart continues to beat for several minutes. This poison is
Ue to poor fermentation. The only way to prevent it is to age the liquor in
‘arrles of charred oak staves.
Xo whisky sold by bootleggers is fit to drink. It is all spurious. That
rhich comes from Canada is counterfeit too.
Big plants have been discovered there making sham Scotch whisky,
especially for American trade,’ under fake labels made in Japan. In Pitts
U 1 gh, Pennsylvania, we raided a plant that had been printing counterfeit labels
1 a " kinds of liquors for three years. They had $25,000 worth of the fake
abels on hand.
B is going to be up to the public, sooner or later, to leave all booze alone,
'"‘npie will stop paying criminals ten to twenty dollars a quart for fake
,
|UlJls t * le country will soon be bone dry.”
Before I went to New York City I was told of a boss bootlegger there who
Uni business three years with taxicab bought on the installment
ago one
an and now owns several hundred taxicabs, the drivers of which are boot
^ HIH ’ besides a fleet of rum-running schooners. Whether that is true or no!
do not know, but with that itn mind I hailed different taxicabs, the first
two
'" '.n i was in New York, and they took to two places where I l>ought
me
01 ' one saloon and restaurant, in uptown of apartment houses
an zone
1 f Better kind, I mahogany bar and buy
saw men drinking whisky at the
it b\ the bottle, and and drinking at tables. There 1
men women were
g Bt a quart of White Horse Scotch whisky, “Made for His Majesty King
At a drug store in the old Tenderloin district I went behind the
■ tiption counter, signed a register, was given a green “membership” card
a hint of Gilmour Thomson’s Royal Blend whiskey, “As Supplied
Q Royal Highness,
the Prince of Wales.”
* a B'iend who is editor of in New York, I was intro
u d a newspaper
to a Well-known bootlegger, Polish and for small fee he took
a Jew, a
t! “ Bootleggar Curb” in the Knickerbocker building, large office build
ns a
1,1 ’Beater district, with entrances on Broadway a,nd on Thirty-ninth
* a ,an office of that building I bought quart of D>ewar & Sons White
^ . a
' li from a so-called “International Distributing Service,'
'hirh ni Plojs
many bootleggers who deliver in lawyers’ brief cases.
Counterfeit Labels for Imitation Whisky
Same Bootlegger took me to a warehouse downtown, half a block oft
toad dnd fi blocks
len ve from the City Hall and newspaper row, where I sa.v
’hisku WOmen pastin S counterfeit labels on bottles to be filled with imitation
s
tdken through Greenwich Village at night and bought a pint of whis
cy cl (a f
Q where .
a hundred men and women were drinking, dancing and
on •OTMWON NITS. COVINGTON, GIOKSU
singing. I was piloted through the cabarets of the Great White Way where
bootlegger's pose as society men and dance with women from the homes of New
York, thus forming acquaintances and finding markets for their booze in the
homes. I tried to buy whisky in only one of those cabarets, and got it—a
pint for eight dollars.
Next day Dr. Frank J. Monahan, then acting head, of the Health Depart- j
ment of New York City, gave me statistics of deaths there from drinking in !
the past thirteen years, showing that prohibition had greatly lessened the j
deaths from that cause. Thus, in 1910 there were 621 deaths from alcoholism,
6 from wood alcohol and 1140 from cirrhosis of the liver, caused by excessive
drinking. The figures Were about the same until 1918, when there were 252
deaths from alcoholism, 4 from wood alcohol and 433 from cirrhosis of the •
liver. In 1920, 28 died from alcoholism, 29 from wood alcohol and 366 from
cirrhosis of the liver. In 1922 the deaths from alcoholism had increased again
to 272, 14 died from wood alcohol and 294 from cirrhosis of the liver.
Frow New York I went to Kansas City, said to he one of the w r ettest cities
in America. There have been great scandals and rumors of graft and black¬
mail hy politicians and officials in the protection of bootleggers and booze joints
Many saloons of prewar days have nevfer closed, but continue as soft-drink
places and bootlegging joints. Other liquor selleite closed their saloons and
opened drug stores. Hundreds of drug stores are saloons in disguise. They
became such an offense that the legitimate druggists formed an “Ethical
Druggists’ Association” last winter and asked the legislature far a law to sup
press bootlegging drug stores. Last winter Frank Witherspoon, president oi
the Kansas City Livestock Exchange, petitioned the politte to close the many
saloons that were selling booze near the stockyards. Louis Oppenstein, police
commissioner, issued a statement in reply in which he said:
“The police commissioners realize there is plenty of booze being sold in
Kansas City, and it is difficult to stop it so long as many of our best people are
chief aids to thie bootlegger by buying his stuff.”
Lumbermen of the Southwest were in convention in Kansas City, and in
that week hundreds of quart bottles of “Black and White” Scotch whisky were
Ixmght and drunk iin hotels. I bought a bottle for tvqelve dollars and had it I
analyzed. It was “a cheap imitation, made of raw alcohol, flavored with creo- I
sote”—the chemical used hy lumbermen to pickle the ground end of fence posts, i
Saloons throughout Kansas City were selling whisky across the bar at
twenty-five to sevlenty-five cents a drink. The bartender poured it from a
; pint bottle he carried in his hip pocket. When that was empty a “runner”
| brought in another. In case of a raid he would drop the bottle and break it and
[ there would be no whisky stock found in the place.
I bought a bottle of that whisky in a saloon. Analysis showed it was
made hy boiling sweet spirits of niter. The niter, being more valatile than
the alcohol, would evaporate, leaving the alcohol behind. The bottle I bought
still had niter in it. The chemist said that kind of a darink would soon “eat
out a person’s kidney's.”
In Chicago I went to see a politician. He told of having gone out one
night with a police sergeant. They had one drink in a saloon near the stock
yards and another in a family saloon in the apartment-house dstriet of the
North Side. Those two dritnks had put him in a hospital for six weeks with an
acute attack of gastritis, and had almost killed the sergeant of police.
The politician accompanied me to both of those saloons. In each we
bought a pint of whisky. That from the North Side saloon had been made by
redistillation of industrial alcohol, denatured with formaldehyde, a poison. The
analysis found traces of that poison in it.
Analysis of the whisky from the other saloon disclosed bichloride of mercury,
an outright poison. In my presence the chemist put a copper cent in this whis¬
ky and then boiled it and enough mercury was deposiled on the coin to be
seen hy the naked eye.
Hooch Drinkers Killed in Streets
The day I was in Chicago the following headlines appeared in its news¬
papers: “Poison Whisky Fatal to Man; Another is III;” “Hunt Rum Runners
on Lake Michigan;” ‘‘Count Yaselli Says He Bought Rum at Garden;” “Bandits
Tunnel Two Walls in Loop; Steal 600 Cases of Whisky;” “New Fatalities from
Poison Moonshine Bring 1923 Death Toll to 42;” “Mayor of Gary and 66 Others
Held as Booze Ring; City Prosecutor and Sheriff Indicted;” “Three Million
Bottles of Fake Gin Drunk in Illinois in One Year.”
Dr. William D. McNally has been for ten years coroner’s chemist of Cook
County. His chemical laboratory is in the City Hall in Chicago.
There he has analyzed thousands of samples of liquors seized in raids
and found in the pockets of men killed by drinking it. He analyzes the vital
organs of all persons killed by accidents in the streets to determine if they
Were drunk.
It is significant that the number of drink-crazed persons killed in the
streets keeps pace with those who die from drinking poisonous booze. The
day I was in Chicago the toll was forty-two that died sin<*e the first of the
year from alcoholism and forty-three who were drunk when killed hy accident
in the streets.
“The reason is that the hooch they drink now frenzies them, makes them
see red, robs them of caution; they rush into the streets and are crushed under
street cars, automobiles and trucks,” said Doctor McNally. “I find this alcohol
in the organs of nearly all killed in the streets.
“Much of the hooch that comes to us is made from industrial alcohol de¬
natured by poisons. We find in it brucine sulphate, a poison. We oftbn find
acetone, a poisonous compound formed in the distillation of wood alcOhOl.
“We find mercury. A man brought us a gallon of alcohol he had bought
from a druggist. It contained bichloride of mercury. We find nitrobenzol in
the organs of persons killed by drinking hooch. It is an aniline preparation
used in denaturing alcohol.
Booze That Kills Rats
“We get lots of whisky mqde from coin mash in moonshine stills. Much
of it contains acetate of lead and verdigris, from the lead and copper in the
stilus. We feed the verdigris liquor to rats and their hair falls off; they de¬
velop a skin disease that kills them. It acts the same way on human beings.
“We very seldom find genuine liquor. Even the best of it is not trud
whisky or gin; it is synthetic liquor, made of raw alcohol flavored with oil of
bourbon or oil of rye. We analyzed a compound usted for putting a bead on whis¬
ky. It contained so much sulphuric acid that it attacked tMe enamel on a sink.
“Warn the public against the dangers of drinking homemade and moon¬
shine liquors. To make pure liquor requires a long fermentation period, care
ful and sanitary distillation, several redistillations and an aging of the liquor
in wood for several yeans. None of those processes are possible in a home¬
made or moonshine still, and the products are always dangerous.”
“What would you say, then, to tHe person who feels that he must have
a drink of liquor; wher* can he get the safe kind?” I asked Dr. McNally.
His answer wals: “From what I have learned in this laboratory about
the liquors of this day and age I would say to that person, and to all others,
paraphrasing the words of wise old King Solomon: Wine is a mocker, strong
drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived by bootleg booze is not wise.”
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