Plenty of Liquor Available in Mount Airy, Jan. 8, 1920

From the Mount Airy News, January 8, 1920

Liquor Prosecutions a Live Issue

This town is and has agitated no little for some days because of the work of detectives here in an effort to put an end to the illegal sale of liquor.

As was noted in the last issue of this paper, three detectives came here and spent the holidays and rounded up more than 30 cases according to the evidence they claimed to produce. During last week the recorders court held two sessions and something less than a dozen cases were heard, only one of which failed to be a conviction. Tuesday the court met again and adjourned until Friday of this week when the agreement with all lawyers and all court officials is that no further recess or delay will be asked for until all the other cases are disposed of. Judge Tilley has not passed sentence on any of the cases heard and will not until all are tried.

In the hearing last week the defense tried to show that the Detective Johnson had contradicted himself to that degree that he could not be believed. The State brought two character witnesses here from Charlotte Tuesday who testified to his reputation as a man who can be believed, both giving him a good character. Most of the cases yet to be heard were worked up by this detective whose evidence is supposed to be the most that is against them.

Conditions here as brought to light by all this detective work and court proceedings makes most interesting talk for the town and country, and large numbers of people daily attend the hearing.

It has been for months that large quantities of liquor were being sold here, is the opinion of many, while others thought that many sales of small quantities were made, but no great amount was being sold as to quantities.

The opinion now of these who are in the best position to judge is that the general public has not been aware of the real conditions here, and that in the fullest sense of the word the town has been wide open all the fall. Some are of the opinion that most of the liquor sold here has been brought in from the country in small quantities, much of it in fruit jars carefully concealed in produce, egg crates and other deceptive ways. They tell how often eggs packed in crates would be in demand but offer what you would the owner could never be induced to sell. The conditions known to some people were such as to make one wonder as to what was in the bottom of the crates.

Some think that liquor has been hauled here in large quantities from the country and from other counties. As evidence of this they say that too much of it has been sold about the warehouses and on the streets for there not to be a supply somewhere about the town. They say that often no sooner than a farmer would get his wagon in the warehouse and his team put away for the night, one could see some man of the reputation of a retailer approach him, and together the two would go to some secluded place about the warehouse, and in half an hour the farmer would be under the influence of liquor and sometimes drunk. Now they say that this has been repeated too many times in the course of an hour or two for there not to be a supply of liquor to which the retailers had access.

Conditions have been as they are for months, and the men engaged in this business are said to have lost all caution and became so bold in their efforts to “do business” that they approached prospective customers in broad day light on the main streets of the town and offered liquor as freely as if there was no law against its sale. Young men who did not buy have gone back to their homes in the country and freely told about how they were approached on the streets and offered liquor for sale. They tell how some of the men engaged in the business had regular engagements with boys about town to gather up empty bottles for them, and in this way they kept a supply of bottles without buying at a store. Some of the men engaged in the business of retailing got so careless as to talk freely of their occupation. One man told of a conversation something like this: The fellow said that a man could not afford to work for wages now. For, he said, a man does not have to sell but two pints in a day to make wages, for if one pays at the rate of $10 $12 a gallon and sells at $4 the pint, he makes good wages on two sales. Some think that not more than a dozen men have been engaged in this business about town, while others think that a much larger number have been delivering the goods, possibly as many as 30 or 40 men.

Facts that are known to the public at this time indicate that the work of the detectives failed to develop any evidence as to the source of the supply of liquor. They did nothing further than to approach a man about town and buy a small quantity, but in no case did they go with him and find where he was buying his liquor.

There are good citizens who claim to be in the possession of facts that presumably lead them to think that citizens here have made large sums of money in the business during the past few months. They have talk like this: They will tell you of a man who has no business and no visible means of making money, and yet he is known to have in his possession, at times, large sums of money. Men who are supposed to be poor often display great rolls of bills, and this act, coupled with the reputation the citizen has made for being a retailer, the citizen has made for being a retailer, leads to the conclusion that he is doing well in a financial way.

There is almost an endless line of interesting talk about the conditions that have prevailed here. The demand for liquor at times has been such that the retailers could get their own price, and they often asked as much as $4 for half a pint. They tell how a retailer would take a pint and pour half into another pint bottle and fill each with water and then sell the contents for $4 a bottle, thus getting $8 for a pint of liquor.

All of which points to the inevitable conclusion that the only way to maintain law and order in this section is for the good citizens to be forever on the watch to see that the laws of the land are enforced.