LIQUOR WAR

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1929, Page 6

LIQUOR WAR

GUNS ROAR ON CANADIAN border.

An extraordinary liquor war is now being waged between the United States’ prohibition enforcement forces and Canadian liquor smugglers. A recent Canadian despatch from Windsor, Ontario, to a New York paper, contained the following news: “Guns.flamed again to-day along the upper reaches of the Detroit River as the rum smugglers essayed another dash through the United States blockade. Heavy firing was reported off Caron avenue, and at 5 a.m. there was a general movement of speed craft in the East Windsor sector, followed by the intermittent roar of guns.” The despatch went on to say that the greatest armed force ever assembled on that section of the border has been mobilised at Detroit. The three agencies of enforcement, customs, prohibition, and coastguard, are under- the command of a “coordinator’’ who controls an army of picked veterans of other enforcement campaigns.

The New York Times states that Detroit looks for real war along the hundred miles of river between Huron and Erie, where the Great Lakes narrow into a band of water dividing Canada from the United States. In a fast motor boat it is only four min'utos across this band of water, and each trip brings wealtli to the ruin runners, or rather the runneys of Canadian whisky, wine and ale. Recently those runners have resorted to shooting, and the day has passed when the Unlited States prohibition forces can shoot with immunity. Rum runners carry automatic rifles and machine guns—and do not use them sparingly. The movement fyom Canada runs into hundreds of thousands of cases of liquor every month, so that a steady flood is constantly pouring over the border by bottle, case, and car load.

It is Jbielieved tliat President- Hoover has selected Detroit as thei laboratory in which to test the “noble experiment” (to quote his own words) of prohibition. Because of its position on the Canadian border, Detroit is tlio most difficult place in the whole of the Union in which to onforce the law. Separated bv a river 31 miles in width, from a country where the manufacture and sale of liquor is lawful, Detroit is bound by steel links to Canada, by railroad tracks in a tunnel, a * bridge, and vehicular tunnel, and by forties. It is connected by railroad and motor highways with every part of Canada and the United -States. In addition to its huge smuggling traffic, the city has vast illicit breweries and distilleries, some 20,009 “speak easies,” or sly-grog shops (also called “blind oics”), and thousands of persons who make their own synthetic liquor. Tt. also lias its gangs of “hi-jaekors,” gunmen, - “racketeers,” and machine gun murderers. Another .matter of deep concern to President Hoover is the well-known fact that bribery and corruption of the Govieynment’s servants has been nowhere so widespread as in Detroit.

CANADA’S ATTITUDE. Little . wonder that, according to the Washington Evening Star, on June 17 last, the Government has ordered “air-pianos, armoured automobiles and cutters to the Canadian front.” To meet this drive the Great Lakes rum runners have organised a giant combine to work from Buffalo to Mackinac. This combine has organised an efficient intelligence system whereby the leader is always aware of what stretches of the border are under the heaviest guard, and at what point danger from interruption is, for the moment, relatively remote. The combine has replaced speed boats with powerful tugs having greater speed, more room and less visibility. It is evidently considered possible to make good profits before the United States Government places an armed guard along the entire length of the international boundary. Canada’s attitude towards tlie rum runners who buy their goods legally in Canadian soil, but sell them illegally across the (border, is a matter of soecial interest. Under tlie present Canadian law, clearance papers are issued to boats that take on cargoes of liquor for the United States, but there is a considerable body of public ppinion in Canada which would like to see the law changed and such clearance papers disallowed. A Canadian parliamentary committee in 1926, and a royal commission since then recommended that the issue of these clearances be stopped. Another section of Canadian opinion, however, defends the present system of the theory that “although the United States may want prohibition officially, unofficially she wants booze.” Tlie fact that one-eiglitli of Canada’s revenue is derived from the trade in alcholio beverages probably accounts for this view, although the Canadian Government has offered to permit American (border patrols to be stationioned on the Canadian liquor docks. This offer, however, has been declined by the United States Government. The Commissioner of Police in Ontario has made a statement, in which ho says that rum runners clearing from Canadian ports are searched for arms, and that no Canadian boats are engaged in the cross-river liquor trade. So evidently the trade is in the hands of Americans.

The “wet” section of the United States press contends that it is the demand for alcholic beverages, in spite of the law, that is tlie main cause of the rum-running war. On June 21, a North American Newspaper Alliance despatch from Detroit