rnment to put an end to frauds and resistance
of authority, and since that time it has been manifest to all
well-meaning men in those regions of the country that the day of the
illicit distiller is past." In his report for 1881-82 the Commissioner
declared that "The supremacy of the laws ... has been established in all
parts of the country."

As a matter of fact, the number of arrests per annum, which hitherto had
ranged from 1,000 to 3,000, now dropped off considerably, and the
casualties in the service became few and far between. But, in 1894,
Congress increased the tax on spirits from the old 90 cents figure to
$1.10 a gallon. The effect was almost instantaneous. We have no means
of learning how many new moonshine stills were set up, but we do know
that the number of seizures doubled and trebled, and that bloodshed
proportionally increased. Again the complaint went out that "justice was
frequently defeated," even in cases of conviction, by failure to visit
adequate punishment upon the offenders. It is, to-day, a notorious fact
that our blockaders dread their own State courts far more than they do
the Federal courts, because the punishment for selling liquor in the
mountain counties is surer to follow conviction than is the penalty for
violating Federal law. The latter is severe enough, if it were enforced;
for defrauding, or attempting to defraud, the United States of the tax
on spirits, the law prescribes forfeiture of the distillery and
apparatus, and of all spirits and raw materials, besides a fine of not
less than $500 nor more than $5,000, _and_ imprisonment for not less
than six months nor longer than three years. I am not able to say what
percentage of arrests is followed by conviction, nor how many convicted
persons suffer the full penalty of the law. I only know that public
opinion in the mountains did not consider an arrest, or even a
conviction, by the Federal authorities, as a very serious matter during
the period from 1880 up to the past two or three years, and little
resistance was offered by blockaders when captured.

Recently, however, a new factor has entered the moonshining problem and
profoundly altered it: the South has gone "dry."

One might have expected that prohibition would be bitterly opposed in
Appalachia, in view of the fact that here the old-fashioned principle
still prevails, in practice, that moderate drinking is neither a sin nor
a disgrace, and that a man has the same right to make