“THE REAL STUFF”

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1608, 17 February 1925, Page 2

“THE REAL STUFF”

HOW “HOOCH” IS MADE. SARCASTIC SENATORS. r Some American senators are growing cynical about the illicit liquor trade. Questioning witnesses before a Senate committee in December, Senator Reed, of Missouri, asked what Congress could do to make prohibition agents “honest,” paid his respects to drug store whisky, and suggested that the authorised addition of poison to industrial alcohol, to prevent its use in liquor manufacture, was “ approaching murder.” Dr J. M. Doran, chief of the industrial alcohol division of the prohibition enforcement service, was explaining the use of strychnine in alcohol caused a bitter taste and almost prevented its use in synthetic gin and other drinks of the prohibition era, when Mr Reed interrupted him. “Can a skilful chemist get this out in distilling?” he asked. “ Undoubtedly,” Mr Doran replied. “That’s reassuring” Mr Doran remarked.

Mr Doran then told of another chemical the use of which he declared would cause a taste in liquor which would turn a person against the further use of liquor.

“ I suggest you give the formula to Dr Wayne B. Wheeler,” said Mr Reed, “ for I think he has been looking for that for a long while.”

“ Don’t you think it an approach to murder to put a subtle poison into alcohol which you think might be converted into liquor?” Mr Reed continued.

Mr Doran didn’t agree with the assumption, but turned the discussion to whisky. He said the whisky sold in drug stores was good whisky. “ You haven’t had as much experience as I,” retorted Mr Reed. “ You have already said a poison is put in alcohol, and yet some buy this alcohol, supposed to be pure, to use in liquor manufacture. You know that one-<tenth; of alcohol is being drunk, and yet you poison it. I think you are poisoning the American people. I think it is wicked, damnable, and if you can think of any other adjective, put it in.” Representative Crampton, of Michigan, declared there was a diversion of 6,000,000 gallons of alcohol last year to illegitimate purposes. “BLACK AND WHITE.” According to the authorities, one’s chance of getting “ the real stuff ” in New York is 1 in 100. This estimate is based on analysis of 30,000 samples seized yearly. The shelves of the Internal Revenue Department’s New York Laboratory are crammed with samples of confiscated liquors of every kind and description. The bottles bear all kinds of labels known to the printer’s art and the boot-leg-ger’s vivid imagination. A bottle picked up at random from the Government chemist’s shelves purported to be “ Black and White,” a brand of Scotch.

According to the label, the manufacturers were distillers to H.M. the King and H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. 'The bottle had been seized with others on Motor-boat K 1245, which was trailed from a boat in Rum Row, and seized with a cargo of smuggled whiskies.

The Black and White, a special brand of choice old Scotch whisky, proved to be denatured alcohol flavoured with “ smoke ” creosote. A drop of bead oil, glycerine, and sulphuric acid had been added to give it the necessary “’bead.” The Prince ot Wales probably never saw such a bottle. THE RAW MATERIALS. •Of the three types of alcohol, straight, completely denatured, and specially denatured, the last is the kind generally used. Pure alcohol can be bought only by druggists and manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. In addition it is the most expensive, costing six dollars a gallon. Completely denatured alcohol contains wood alcohol which cannot be readily distilled to eliminate the poison. Bootleggers use specially denatured alcohol to make their “ real stuff.” It costs about one dollar a gallon.

Specially denatured alcohol contains some chemical compound which is found in the dentrifice, perfume, soap, or other articles for which it is presumably purchased. The combinations include benzine, liquid pine tar nicotine, wood alcohol, and camphor, sulphuric, ether formaldehyde, carbolic acid, soap and glycerine and iodine. In recovering the alcohol for beverage purposes some of these chemicals remain in solution.

The cost of a case of pure Scotch such as 99 in 100 local customers purchase has been estimated by the Government chemists at about three dollars for everything. This “real stuff” can be purchased at varying prices, depending upon the gullibility of the customer, but the average price is twenty dollars a case, and bootleggers in New York operate on a basis of 2000 per cent profit. When the drinks are sold at 50 cents a piece over the counter with 400

drinks to the gallon the profits stagger the imagination. The only genuine liquor obtainable in the country to-day, outside of the small quantity smuggled in is included within the list of sacramental wines.

The fact that liquor, Scotch, wines, or what not came from the rum fleet means nothing concerning its authenticity. It is cheaper to concoct alcoholic preparations in Bermuda and England and smuggle them through to New York than to purchase the genuine whisky.