AMERICA’S BOOTLEGGERS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 258, 28 July 1934, Page 18

AMERICA’S BOOTLEGGERS

Menace of Faked Liquor

Bootleggers are still successfully selling their products in the United States, In spite of the repeal of Prohibition.

It is now proposed that the Government should take control of the manufacture of bottles in which liquors are sold.

The Government is fully alive to the evils of the situation, and intends to act with the greatest energy in stamping them out. Mr. Joseph Choate, who, in co-opera-tion with Treasury officials, has been commissioned by President Roosevelt to conduct a “no-quarter” war against the illicit liquor traffickers, Is considering the latest suggestion. A number of the leading distillery companies, rendered desperate by the flood of artificial liquor which Is pouring on to the market, undercutting their prices, are solidly behind the proposal. These companies, which have been spending enormous sums during the past few months in advertising their special brands, have suffered the experience of seeing a large part of their legitimate business going into the hands of bootleggers.

The latter market their products with bottles, labels, and packing so skilfully copied from those used by the distillers, that purchasers find it almost impossible to tell any difference except by the taste or a chemical analysis of the bottles’ contents.

In the hope of putting an end to these practices, it is suggested that sellers of liquor should be compelled to buy all their bottles through Government-con-trolled agencies, a nominal tax to be levied on each bottle, with evidence of payment blown into the glass. Tlds play, it in believed, would eliminate bottle and label “faking," and give the Government adequate control over the situation, which is daily growing more and more out of hand. During one week alone nearly 300 illicit stills and more than 20,000 gallons of spirits were seized, and some 400 arrests were made.

Apart from “faked” bottles, the Treasury is faced with the further problem of stamping out a new “racket”— that of the wholesale collection from apartment houses, hotels and restaurants of genuine empty bottles. - •