fraud
under the most favorable conditions--an amount not sufficient to offset
the possibility of severe penalties of fine, imprisonment, and
confiscation of property.... The rate of 70 cents ... constituted a
moderate temptation to fraud. Its increase to 90 cents constituted a
temptation altogether too great for human nature, as employed in
manufacturing and selling whiskey, to resist.... During 1875-6,
highwines sold openly in the Chicago and Cincinnati markets at prices
less than the average cost of production plus the Government tax.
Investigations showed that the persons mainly concerned in the work of
fraud were the Government officials rather than the distillers; and that
a so-called 'Whiskey Ring' ... extended to Washington, and embraced
within its sphere of influence and participation, not merely local
supervisors, collectors, inspectors, and storekeepers of the revenue,
but even officers of the Internal Revenue Bureau, and probably, also,
persons occupying confidential relations with the Executive of the
Nation."

* * * * *

Such being the condition of affairs in the centers of civilization in
the latter part of the nineteenth century, let us now turn to the
mountains, and see how matters stood among those primitive people who
were still tarrying in the eighteenth. Their situation at that time is
thus briefly sketched by a southern historian[7]:

"Before the war these simple folks made their apples and peaches into
brandy, and their corn into whiskey, and these products, with a few
cattle, some dried fruits, honey, beeswax, nuts, wool, hides, fur,
herbs, ginseng and other roots, and woolen socks knitted by the women in
their long winter evenings, formed the stock in trade which they
bartered for their plain necessaries and few luxuries, their homespun
and cotton cloths, sugar, coffee, snuff, and fiddles.... The raising of
a crop of corn in summer, and the getting out of tan-bark and lumber in
winter, were almost their only resources.... The burden of taxation
rested lightly on them. For near two generations no excise duties had
been levied.... The war came on. They were mostly loyal to the Union.
They paid the first moderate tax without a murmur.

"They were willing to pay any tax that they were able to pay. But
suddenly the tax jumped to $1.50, and then to $2, a gallon. The people
were goaded to open rebellion. Their corn at that time brought only from
25 to 40 cents a bush