A visit today to a United States District Court in most any section of
the Blue Ridge Country where makers of illicit whiskey are being tried
shows that the name moonshine no longer applies to the beverage. It got
its name from being made at night. Now operations in the making are
conducted by day, while only the transportation of the liquor is carried
on after nightfall. Trucks and even dilapidated Fords with the windows
smeared with soap to conceal the load are pressed into service. The
drivers consider it safer to travel with their illegal cargo under the
shades of darkness.
During the questioning of witnesses and offenders in court you learn
that tips provided by law-abiding citizens are the usual means of
bringing offenders to trial. In rare instances, however, members of a
moonshiner's own family have been known to turn him in.
The process of capturing the moonshiner has changed considerably from
that of other days. Then the revenooer (mountain folk usually call him
the law) slipped up from behind the bushes on the offender and caught
him red-handed at the still. In those days the men who were making had
their lookout men who gave warning by a call or a whistle, even by gun
signals, of the approach of the law while the moonshiner took to his
heels, hiding in deep underbrush or far back under cliffs. Today these
mountain men have learned not to run. For the officers of the law are
equipped with long-range guns and with equipment so powerful the bullets
can penetrate the steel body of an automobile. The method of locating
the still has changed too since the airplane has come into use. Looking
down from the clouds the flyer spies a thin stream of smoke rising from
a wooded ravine. He communicates by radio to his co-workers of the
ground crew, who immediately set out at high speed by automobile to
capture the still.
It is estimated that of the 170,000,000 gallons of liquor consumed in
this country in 1939, at least 35,000,000 were illicit and that for
every legal distillery there are at least one hundred illegal ones. The
southern mountain region has always lent itself admirably to the making
of moonshine and for this reason has been a thorn in the flesh of U. S.
Alcohol Tax Unit. During the year 1939, according to _Life_, it is
estimated that more than 4000 stills were captured in the states of
Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida.
However, it is not the moonshiner who reaps the richest revenue from
corn whiskey, which he sells for ninety cents a gallon, but the
bootlegger and others down the line who add on, each in his turn, until
the potent drink reaches a final sale price of ninety cents a quart and
more. The tax on legitimate whiskey is $2.25 a proof gallon which makes
it prohibitive in a community competing with the moonshiner's untaxed
product.
Through the southern mountain region Negroes frequently are employed by
white men operating stills on a large scale, where many boxes are used
for the fermenting mash. The fines and sentences vary with the output
and number of offenses.
The mountaineer, on the other hand, who operates a small still usually
is a poor man. When brought into court he pleads that he cannot haul out
a load of corn over rugged roads miles to a market and compete with a
farmer from the lowlands who is not retarded by bad roads. Or again, if
he is from an extremely isolated mountain section, he offers the old
reasoning, "It is my land and my corn--why can't I do with my crop
whatever I please?"
If the federal judge is a kindly, understanding man he will listen
patiently to the story of the mountaineer who has made illicit whiskey,
and if it be only the first or second offense, a sentence of six months
in prison is imposed. "But, judge, your honor," pleads the perplexed
mountaineer. "I've got to put in my crop and my old woman is ailin'--she
can't holp none. I've got to lay in foirwood for winter, judge, your
honor, my youngins is too little to holp." Often the understanding judge
replies, "Now, John, you go back home and get your work done up, then
come back and serve your sentence." Rarely has the judge's trust been
betrayed.