PROHIBITION ENFORCEMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19135, 1 April 1924, Page 7

PROHIBITION ENFORCEMENT

LEGALISED SMUGGLING. BOOTLEGGERS GET BACK STILLWASHINGTON, March 15. Clad in a cowboy outfit, with a dashing sombrero, Pete Baldwin, a captain in the Texas Rangers, began breezily his evidence at the Senate inquiry into the Teapot Dome oil lease scandal with the recital of what a “joke” prohibition enforcement was in his corner of America. Pete said that he once caught a prohibition official selling a whisky still to a bootlegger, but could do nothing about it. Finally somebody with influence at Washington caused Pete to be removed from office because he was too active in stopping the smuggling of arms into Mexico. The brother-in-law of the Attorney-General, Mr Daugherty, was in charge of the district, and the understanding among officials lust year was to sanction a revolution in Mexico if the “right people” headed it. ( Baldwin declared that he received several orders from the Department of Justice- directing him not to interfere with illicit liquor traffic across the Mexican border. Frank Quinby, a New York moving picture operator, told the Senate Committee how the Carpentior-Dompaej\ fight pictures were exhibited through 30 States. He did not then realise that the exhibition was in defiance of the law. He and Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter, entered into an agreement with Muina, who was a reporter on MLean’s newspaper, tho Washington Post, and William Orr, a friend of Jesse Smith. The latter was Mr Daugherty's business associate, and thus the committee traced the matter back towards Mr Daugherty. AN IMPORTER’S DILEMMA. NEW YORK, March 19, Whisky can be obtained so easily and so cheaply in Hie United States ttmt it does not pay to imjvort first-class brand* for medicinal purposes, according to a statement of an old-established importing firm in New Xork, which applied to the Government for permission to export 9000 cases of rare Scotch, imported three years ago. Mr Alfred Wile, the applicant, declares that he and other importer* found that, after paying the import tax and storage charges, they wore unable to sell whisky to chemists and hospitals because bootleggers who smuggled in spirits were aWe to sell to them at £5 a case cheaper. No mutter how low wa* the figure quoted, said Mr Wile, tho bootleggers always went lower, and they even went so far as to offer to buy his stock and then fabricate a robbery in order to remove it. Finally Mr Wile decided that the best plan was to return the whisky to the distillers.