Attorney W. M. Colvig, who returned Sunday from Salem, where he went in the interests of the advancement of the anti-saloon appeal case, reports that he was unsuccessful in having the case advanced to a hearing in the supreme court before the usual summer vacation of the court, but he was successful, however, in having the case placed for the very first one on the docket of the opening of that court on October 7.
    This means that Jackson County will still be "wet," at least until the appeal has been heard. This is not just what Mr. Colvig had hoped for, but when Judge Bean gave him an idea of the amount of work that court had ahead of it, he considered himself fortunate in getting the date fixed as early as he did.
Medford Mail, August 7, 1908, page 5

    A great parade Monday, at 6:30 p.m., Nov. 7. The parade forms on 3rd and N. Oakdale and W. Main, and will start at 7 p.m. The parade will terminate at the Natatorium for a great mass meeting. The greatest parade ever pulled off in Medford. One cornet band, two martial bands of music. Automobiles, bicycles, floats, horseback riders and a great multitude marching in line. Everybody come, whole county is invited. Oregon dry in 1910. --(Paid advertisement)
Medford Mail Tribune, November 6, 1910, page 4

    On the last day of legalized selling of liquor in Medford--away back in 1916 [the last day was December 31, 1915], when manufacture, sale or importation of liquor into Oregon was prohibited by state law--witnessed the closing of 14 places where liquor had been legally sold. In the county there were no distilleries and two breweries.
    Now, according to those who are charged with seeing that no alcoholic drinks are sold, there are many more places where alcoholic drinks can be obtained than there were prior to the enactment of the Oregon dry amendment. There are many times more distilleries and many more breweries--to say nothing of the homemade apparatus for making beer and wine for family consumption.
    The only trouble is to prove it.
    In this city--long known as a home-loving community, exemplifying the law-abiding calmness of Oregon--the local resident who can't chase up at least a pint of liquor in an hour is an inexperienced about-towner indeed. Even a novice can purchase the wherewithal of becoming drunk by walking into any drug store and almost any pool hall--and do it in a legal manner. All he has to do is ask for one of many "tonics" manufactured and sold under government permit. Some consist of alcoholic bitters and some of high-powered wine with a taste slightly spoiled by beer extract.
    It is with the illegal liquor business, however, that county and city officers are most concerned. Although public drunkenness is rare in Medford, officials are quite aware that selling--of liquor ranging all the way from beer to grain alcohol--is going on steadily, and that there are more people engaged in the business than when it was a legal occupation.
    They can even estimate fairly accurately how many people are engaged in the booze traffic in Medford.
    Counting the hip pocket pikers, there are from 24 to 30 bootleggers in Medford. The estimate of illicit distilleries in Jackson County is about eight.
    In addition, it is common sense to believe that more than one person is running in liquor--meaning grain alcohol, "bonded" goods and moonshine--into the county for wholesale delivery or delivery to a local list of consumers.
    Of course, Medford is much bigger than it was in 1916, and your liquor dealer of today probably sells less in a week than a bartender did in a day, but the fact remains that, state and national laws to the contrary, booze is still being made and sold.
    There is no "wild night life" here.
    There are no "gilded dens of vice and pleasure."
    There are no institutions that encourage flaming youth to strut itself and flame the limit.
    A home-loving, industrious, progressive city of 100 percent Americans is Medford. The average citizen is pictured as the type that sits at home evenings and reads comfortably of the sins of New York and Chicago before going to bed at the locally conventional hour of 10:00 p.m.
    There must be, however, a small population that imbibes steadily, or else a rather large population that drinks occasionally, for booze sales are not uncommon.
    Before 1916, breweries made beer, wineries made wine and distilleries made stronger drinks, on the same standardized basis that Henry Ford makes cars.
    Today, some of the methods need to produce alcoholic drinks would startle the old-time manufacturers, to say the least.
    The conventional outfit captured in Jackson County is a copper vat and worm, heated by a gasoline plate set under the "can" and connected with a pressure tank. Corn meal forms the basis for mash. Some of the "cans" are big and clean. Some are made of wash boilers [omission] and green with filth. One still captured was made of an iron gasoline barrel and a couple of joints of iron pipe--hardy people, local inebriates, to drink the product of that still and not go blind, at least.
    Once in a while the police pick up an insane drunk who melted a tin of "canned heat," strained it through a handkerchief and drank everything that strained through. There are still a few odd souls alive who believe that if you swallow some mentholatum, wood alcohol won't kill you.
    And then there are the brewers and the wine makers whose product is the work of nature, insofar as it is made perilous by filthy equipment or amateur attempts to generate more "kick."
    Clever fellows are the producers of "bonded" liquor. Given some labels, some grain alcohol, some glycerine and some flavoring, they can--and do--produce liquor for the "high class" trade.
    The alcohol, the queerly shaped bottles, the labels, the flavoring and the coloring is all shipped into Medford, but the "bonded stuff" is a home product. That is, it was a home product. Recently a "Gordon's Bonded Dry Gin" plant was seized, and as far as officers know, there are no more of them in Medford.
    With about $10 worth of alcohol--at wholesale prices--a plentiful supply of water and another $10 worth of bottles, labels and other furnishings, a gin maker can turn out two gallons of synthetic product. In short-quart bottles with four-colored labels, wrapped in fancy tissue paper and with a "chemist's analysis" printed on a slip of paper thrown in, along with a fairy tale about each and every bottle crossing the briny deep from England into Canada and then through divers perils into the United States and your private stock, the stuff sells for around $3.50 per quart, or $36 profit for the $20 invested in labels and alcohol. Considering the story that goes with "bonded stuff," the price is reasonable.
    From the starting point of alcohol, water and glycerine, one manufacturer arrested near Medford some time ago was able to produce either gin or Bacardi rum. To make rum he put in coloring and flavor extract instead of juniper extract, and poured it into a different bottle.
    At that, the two local makers of "bonded stuff" who have been captured haven't shown much originality. One Italian rum runner caught two years ago had 12 different varieties of "bonded stuff," eight of them made with the same flavoring. But he was a city slicker from San Francisco, and that doesn't count.
    Northern California supplies a not inconsiderable part of Jackson County's liquor. In addition to varieties made here, they turn out "grappa," a drink made from grape mash and reputedly containing more alcohol than straight alcohol itself.
    Police and the sheriff's office can estimate fairly closely how many house manufacturers and salesmen there are working, but catching them is a different matter.
    It's hard for an officer to know all the bootleggers, but in a place of this size it's no trouble at all for all the bootleggers to know the cops. In spite of this, however, local and county officers have an enviable record throughout Oregon for their efficiency in enforcing the prohibition law, indicating that Jackson County isn't the only county with its liquor troubles.
    Fundamental laws of our government designed to protect private citizens from official tyranny clash with other fundamental laws concerning an arid nation where attempts to enforce the prohibition law are concerned, with the result that enforcing the law is a sort of game of hide-and-seek in a mass of red tape.
    For instance, if an officer is certain the resident of a house is selling liquor there, he must get a search warrant before he can enter the house and hunt the liquor. To get a search warrant all he has to do is get someone to swear that they bought liquor there from the suspect.
    The prohibition law is outstanding for the failure of the public--both drinking and non-drinking--to aid officials. The public attitude seems to be: "We passed the law and hired you to enforce it. Tag, you're it, now try and do it. If you don't we'll cuss you, and if you do we'll cuss you anyway."
    Aside from neighbors irate at being kept awake by parties in the booze joint next door, few people report a suspected house. Even fewer will either volunteer or be forced to aid in getting out a search warrant by swearing they got liquor there.
    In the first frenzy to enforce its brand-new law, the state used stool pigeons to make the purchases and swear to the warrants. In many cases the stool pigeons were worse to have around than were the bootleggers. Using them was largely a matter of desperation, and officials who hired them were usually rewarded by defeat at the next election. The public added another rule to the ones the officers had to follow in the hide-and-seek game.
    With all local officers known by sight to the law-dodgers, and with stool pigeons taboo, the method was evolved of using salaried state and federal officers for the undercover work. They are shifted from one place to another, are thus kept unknown to the alky boys, and because they are of a decent type have been able to function so far without a public uprising at the polls.
    All the troubles of catching a bootlegger who works in a residence and more are involved in arresting one who serves from the hip pocket or makes deliveries. They must either be caught with the goods on them, making a sale, or at their cache. In this case, also, officers are under the handicap of being known by sight to the men they seek to arrest. In liquor cases, circumstantial evidence doesn't seem to mean a thing to juries--and try to catch them with the goods.
    In spite of all these troubles, however, added to the fact that an officer has several hundred other laws to enforce, Medford has the reputation of being dry and getting drier all the time.
    "Every man his own brewer" is no idle slogan. Beer, as a general rule, doesn't run very high in alcoholic content, in spite of the fact that the law makes no distinction between it and grain alcohol. Homemade wine, however, can be--and frequently is--far from light.
    Both federal and state amendments forbid the manufacturing of intoxicating beverages and class both beer and wine as such, but again the job is to prove it. If a citizen had the facilities, kept his wine at home and didn't sell any of it, he could make a thousand gallons and drink himself to death with no greater legal danger than being suspected. Without evidence of a sale an officer couldn't come in his house to see if wine was being manufactured. Of course, if the citizen went downtown drunk he might be arrested for violating a city ordinance, or if he lent his neighborhood a bad reputation they might close the house as a nuisance, but he'd be safe from prosecution on liquor charges.

Last revised December 12, 2011