The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 46

tf Vy 0 "wrl'iiyw' A s. CRIME THE COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 13, 1950. passing snow SECTION 3 Z)y States Cash In On Illegal-Liquor Trade lEiniFj A A. fcJ M. flfefi 5 EASY PW LOAN 'y PLANS i To Remember When You Are In Need of Good Tools At Reasonable Prices Male "The Tout Store of LouUrUle Your Headquarters This is another story in a joint reporting effort by The Courier-Journal and 14 other leading American newspapers to inform the public about the growing power of national crime syndicates.

It is based on material furnished by Horace Thompson of The Oklahoma City Times and by the Jackson, bureau -of The New Orleans Times-Picayune. CUT THE HIGH Scythe Blade (Austrian) S4.9S Weed Blade S1.75 Scythe Stone 30c Little Giant Grass Hook 89c Lefthand Grass Hook 1 -75c Disston Lawn Rake $1.89 ay ii vi fmnnunyinnin imm-f aue WEEDS NOW RELIEVE THOSE TIRED MUSCLES To Freihen and Tone the Skin The STIM-U-LAX Jr. Massage instrument is what you need. $24 50 Price confident that the 1948 Legislature would ditch the levy. The Senate that yar did vote repeal of the law, but a House committee tucked it away in a pigeonhole.

The revenue-conscious 1950 Legislature made certain that Black Market repeal didn't get to first base. Cities Latch On Under Mrs. Thomas L. Bailey, widow of the late Governor, the Black Market levy has hit new highs since she took the collector's office in January, 1948. Last year, it brought in and it figures to run that high or higher in 1950.

Even some of Mississippi's City Governments have latched onto the Black-Market tax. Vicksburg was first, in 1947. Since then, Natchez and Pascagoula have adopted such ordinances. And Biloxi, Rosedale and Areola have slightly different ways of collecting from the liquor trade to help pay municipal expenses. Oklahoma is traditionally dry as to law and wet as to drinking habits.

When it was Indian Territory, sale of liquor to the Indians was forbidden by federal law law flouted just about as widely then as now. Moreover, the people have voted repeatedly to keep the official dry status. The last such vote was last year, and the margin was 323,270 to 267,870. Laic Repeated Oklahoma's confusion over liquor stems from several roots. Not the least of these is the attitude of the Federal Government that enforcement of the liquor laws is up to the State, so long as the peddlers pay their proper fees to Washington.

But the real puzzler is this: In 1936, Congress pased a law a really simple little law. It gave federal authorities power to prosecute persons importing liquor into a dry state but only if that State also has a law forbidding such imports. In 1939, the Oklahoma Legislature adopted a law to ban the import of liquor. But it made an exception of wine used for sacramental purposes. Now, by a quirk of the law, it is necessary for the Legislature to vote every two years on the State's 3.2 per cent beer law.

Into the beer-tax bill of 1947 was slipped a clause repealing the Sacramental Wine Act; and it passed. Assistance Stopped Up to that time, the Alcohol Tax Unit had given some help in enforcing the State's dry laws. That help suddenly was withdrawn because the State no longer had a law specifically prohibiting imports of liquor. In 1949, the Legislature vent through the motions of re-enacting the Sacramental Wine Act. A.T.U.

agents swooped down in three areas of the state and made three arrests and the United States district courts in both Oklahoma City and Tulsa tossed out the cases on the grounds that the Legislature actually had not re-enacted the Sacramental Wine Act. The cases are pending on appeal but federal enforcement again has been withdrawn It's all very confusing to the average Oklahoman. So the state goes on being dry and drinking wet. TO THE TOOL STORE Of Louisville QUALITY POCKET KNIVES Heavy 2-Blade Pattern, $1.25 Heavy 3-Blade Pattern, $3.50 HEIMjrJpiER tMCOeeoftATie Between First Market Street, Keep alive to opportunity Has To Live YOUR DOLLARS WILL GO FARTHER Servire for service what do you finrl? ARNOLD'S mod-ern vans and service second to none. 4.

years' experience. Safe protection, low cost all risk insurance, 32.50 for each 1,000. NATION-WIDE MOVE WITH ARNOLD'S I'NCONOI-TIONAI. GUARANTEE AND HAVE VOIR MIND AT EASE Wanted Return Load and Part Load To and From Other Citie iN'O CHARGE to be paid until your furniture is unloaded, unpacked, placed. up and rugs laid in new nome for jour innpection and entire atifaction.

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FIREPLACE CURTAINS enhance the. charm of your fir.plate. These graceful Cur-taint efford a clearer view of the fireplace. Both Flexiereen Seem DIUPE till 4 Well, A State Coast, you can get any sort of drink across the bar and not in a secretive speakeasy, either. The same is true in river towns like Natchez and Vicksburg.

In the capital city of Jackson, a five-minute ride from the State-house takes you to Rankin County's tarnished "Gold Coast," where a nest of roadhouses employs schools of "runners" to bring liquor to your car. And in Jackson itself, you usually can get a bottle or a case with no more effort than a ph'one call requires. Receipts Vary So it goes throughout the state. The liquor is there; and anybody who wants it can get it. Mississippi has had prohibition laws since 1908, when sTie set a possession limit of two quarts a month.

Since then, legislative acts in 1912 and 1918 outlawed all sales, transportation and possession of liquor. National Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The following year the State Legislature submitted the questions of legalization of liquor and beer to a vote of the people. The beer proposal TO! IPs Famous for Quality and Dependable Service Since 1898 It's Best to Know Your Dealer and Most Folks Know Kirchdorfer's On the Corner of Baxter and Christy for Over 50 Years. Come to Kirchdorfer's for Your Next Appliance See Why Frigidaire and Kirchdorfer's Offer So Much More In Quality and Dependable Service At Such a Reasonable Price.

SINCE REPEAL of the 18th Amendment, traffic in alcoholic drinks has faded out as the No. 1 interest of American crime syndicates. In most cases, that is. There are two outstanding exceptions Oklahoma and Mississippi, the only two remaining "dry" states. Strange cases they are, too.

Both states still vote dry and drink wet. Oklahoma won't admit that liquor is merchandise. But the Oklahoma State Tax Commission collects a kind of tribute from the liquor racket in the form of a merchandise sales tax. In Mississippi, the people seem to speak a bit more bluntly. Mississippi, too, collects a tax on alcoholic drinks which are illegal and quite openly calls it a "Black Market tax." Ttco Attitudes Racket hating Oklahoma is funneling between $60,000,000 and $70,000,000 a year into the bootleg-whisky machinery which keeps her thirst quenched.

And about $45,000,000 a year changes hands in Mississippi for illegal liquor. Apparently, the left-handed approach of these two State Governments to the liquor business stems from two different mental attitudes. Oklahoma finds everything about the business tfery confusing. Officially, the State seems to say something like this: "We can't control liquor, so we'll just drink iA and collect whatever taxes we can get out of something that legally doesn't exist." In Mississippi, the hard stuff flows so freely and the State does so well with its Black-Market tax that the attitude seems to be something like this: "Why not let well enough alone? The drys have their laws. The wets have their liquor.

The State is collecting taxes. Why worry about making a change?" Possible Loophole However, things might have to change in both states. The Ke-fauver committee looking into crime syndicates might find fertile fields in both Oklahoma and Mississippi. And if and when Congress gets around to considering putting the federal Government into crime-law enforcement on the local level, these states may provide focal points. In both states, the big problem is not moonshine liquor, but good, tax-paid stuff bearing the red-and-green-stamp bonnets the Federal Government requires.

It is shipped in through various channels. And, so long as the shippers and distributors pay the necessary Federal Government taxes and have the proper permits, Washington doesn't seem particularly interested. Liquor Is There However, these shipments definitely are in interstate commerce. And that is where Congress might possibly find a loophole for taking action. Throughout Oklahoma, a bottle of high-grade whisky usually is no farther away than your telephone.

In Mississippi, a responsible State official says that only five of the State's 82 counties are really dry. Along the Mississippi Gulf 1913 WA 7771 yfo to PESii and Now Sufferers From Middle Ear Deafness Need Jo Longer Wear A Hearing Aid in Either Ear! NO EAR BUTTONS NO HEADBAND -NO PRESSURE NOTHING IN EITHER EAR FIREPLACE mm mm Fhone JA 7363 JA 7364 and Second Read the CLASSIFIED ADS. Frigidaire Refrigerator with the Meter-Miser 3 typti, 4 series, 10 sizes from 4 to 17 cubic feet. '1 iL.aiiB. rlfl IIIIIIM Frigidaire-Dehumidifler Stops moisture-damage, rust, mold, mildew electrically.

Frigidaire Window-Type Air Conditioner Easily installed economicaf to operate. GENEROUS TRADE-IN ALLOWANCE FOR YOUR OLD APPLIANCE jrn mm DEAFNESS STRIKES Frigidaire Electric Range 9 beautiful models te choose from. was adopted at the polls, but liquor legalization was rejected. In 1944, when the term "Black Market" was a household word, a group of lawmakers seized the opportunity 'to put the bite on liquor without legalizing the stuff. They wrote a law which never mentioned liquor, but which slapped a 10 per cent tax on gross proceeds on sales of any commodities "the sale or.

distribution of which is prohibited by law." The then Governor, Thomas L. Bailey, who had been in on the strategy, put his signature on the measure. Collection of the levy was handed to the State tax collector (an entirely separate agency from the State Tax Commission, which handles general revenues). Thereafter that office was set up in the business of collecting the Black Market tax solely on the liquor trade. Receipts from the tax have waxed and waned with the temperature of the Legislature.

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