"THERE'S A REASON"

Add to the list of storm centers which all of a sudden emerge on the country's map the name of Hurley, Wisconsin. Defiance of the prohibition laws of the United States was effectively met by an armed raid conducted by enforcement officers who confiscated enough moonshine to illuminate the entire North Woods and arrested a band of seventy men.

The alcoholic content of Hurley no doubt did exceed the legal percentage of one-half of one, and the condition there seems to have resembled that in the more or less mythical Utopia where the bootleggers must perforce wear badges to avoid selling to each other. Word had been passed out by the liquor dealers of the Wiseonsin hamlet that here was "one place in God's country" that was a "man's town for real men," and intimated in no uncertain terms that the first prohibition agent to make his presence known would find the vicinity unhealthy.

The deplorable miscalculation which resulted in the eventless, wholesale roundup seems to have been caused by the excellence of the bootleggers' product. The army of thirty lumberjacks, who were apparently counted on to repulse the officers, was paralyzed by the liquor. Had there been less kick in the product, the hapless, defenseless bootleggers might have fulfilled their anticipation of stimulating the courage of their constituents rather than seeing all the available bravery drowned in the gutter.

There is a lesson in this tale of woe. It has been demonstrated that in this case, as elsewhere, the persons who wave the flag, make the "eagle scream," and are most volubly interested in the preservation of "personal liberty" are the gentlemen engaged in illicit liquor peddling and their idea of the "pursuit of happiness" which is guaranteed by the constitution goes very little farther than the privilege of profit.