his own whiskey as
his own soup, if he chooses. Undoubtedly those who fight the liquor
traffic on purely moral grounds are a small minority in the mountains.
But the blockaders themselves are glad to see prohibitory laws enforced
to the letter, so far as saloons and registered distilleries are
concerned, and the drinking public prefer their native product from both
patriotic and gustatory motives. Such a combination is irresistible.

When pure "blockade" of normal strength sold as cheaply as it did before
prohibition there was no great profit in it, all risks and expenses
considered. But to-day, even with interstate shipments of liquors to
consumers, a gallon of "blockade" will be watered to half-strength, then
fortified with cologne spirits or other abominations, and peddled out
by bootleggers, at $1.50 a quart, in villages and lumber camps where
somebody always is thirsty and can find the coin to assuage it. Thus,
amid a poverty-stricken class of mountaineers, the temptation to run a
secret still, and adulterate the output, inflames and spreads.

In any case, the fact is that blockading as a business conducted in
armed defiance of the law is increasing by leaps and bounds since the
mountain region went "dry." The profits to-day are much greater than
before, because liquor is harder to get, in country districts, and
consumers will pay higher prices without question.

Correspondingly, the risks are greater than ever. Arrests have increased
rapidly, and so have mortal combats between officers and outlaws.
Blockading has returned to much the same status described (as previously
quoted) by our Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1876. I have not seen
recent revenue reports, but I do not need to; for the war between
officers and moonshiners is so close to us that we almost live within
gun-crack of it. If Mr. Harkins were alive to-day, he would say: "They
used to shoot--and they have taken it up again."

Observe, please, that this is no argument for or against prohibition.
That is not my business. As a descriptive writer it is my duty to
collect facts, whether pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of my own or
anyone else's bias, and present them in orderly sequence. It is for the
reader to deduce his own conclusions, and with them I have nothing at
all to do.

I have given in brief the history of illicit distilling because we must
consider it before we can grasp firmly the basic fact that this is not
so much a moral as an