Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1913 — MOONSHINERSALERT [ARTICLE]

MOONSHINERSALERT

Strangers Shadowed in Certain West Virginia Districts. They Often Can Be Very Generous— Information Concerning Illicit Distillers It Is Well for Visitors to Possess. Pocahontas, W. Va. The merry moonshiner is a picturesque character on his native heath, possessed of all the cunning of a hunted deer —shrewd and suspicious and as dangerous as edged tools in the hands of a novice to those suspected of having evil designs upon his peace and welfare, but generous to a fault toward those who he is satisfied are his friends. He will shoot at the drop of a hat or divide his last meal, as the case may be. No stranger comes around into these mountains without being shadowed from the time he comes in until he departs and is well out of the country, writes a Pocahontas (W. Va.) correspondent. Every stranger is regarded as a government spy until he is proved to be otherwise beyond the shadow of a doubt A perfect system of espionage is in vogue and no man can expect to come in and go out unheralded. Me may not know it, but the watchful mountaineers in the neighborhood keep the strictest tab on his movements. At the first demonstration revealing his mission he is met unexpectedly to himself, and shot or commanded to move out of the country at once. No stranger can buy whisky face to face with the seller. Not even in case of snake bite will he sell it that way. If one wants a jug or bottle of this young and peppery mountain product there is a way to get it, however. Just casually remark in the hearing of a« native that it would require a gallon jug of real, genuine moonshine to make you happy and he will find a way out of the dilemma for you. He will solemnly declare to you that he hasn’t the most remote idea where there is an illicit distillery and he does not know any one that deals in the stuff, but he is of the opinion that if you leave the jug and the price of a gallon of the fluid at a given point you may get some relief. It is remarkable what a night will bring forth in a case of this sort. In the morning the money is gone and the whisky is in the jug. And such whisky! It is almost colorless and looks harmless, but woe to the man who drinks it out of a tin cup. He takes the contract of a sort of progressive and retrospective jag. The first day he is delightfully drunk, the second day he becomes mean, the third day he Is a maudlin, crying drunk, and then it takes two or three days to ascend the scale to a state of sobriety. ' One deep, gurgling draft will do all this. It takes a native to the "manner born” to know how to imbibe this producirtJf the “worm" and live to look unflinchingly In the eyes of his friends. He. touches it lightly. The moonshiner has a plausible defense for his unlicensed night work. He says he has to do it to live. This country, being high and backward in the spring, produces unlimited quantities of peaches. Being miles and miles from railroads or Other means of transportation, they cannot be marketed. The eame is true of apples, corn, wheat and rye. The next best thing is to convert these commodities into a product which can be transported to market and which is valuable In condensed form, and the most convenient and profitable thing Is to convert them into whisky and shirk the government duty The ■ moonshiner argues, if one can get an expression

from him in the case, that the government permits its subjects to market the raw products on their lands without a license, and he cannot see the justice of a law that will punish him for .changing the same products into a m?sre valuable form and selling it without a license. It is not a matter of conscience with the moonshiner. The only point he considers is that of detection and capture. The government is regarded as a persecutor and the moonshiner the injured person.