@PopularMechanics _ March 2019 59and cannot even be guessed, but the government itself admits
the total is quite large.
With Uncle Sam’s new rum-chasing navy now in action, the
government forces expect a decided drop in the list of successful
smugglers. The government was handicapped for a time by lack
of high-speed craft and men to man them, but this deficiency
has now been met.
Until the passage of the Harrison antinarcotic law, jewels
led the list of smuggled articles passing American borders,
both because their smallness made concealment easy, and
because the high duties on jewels offered an opportunity for
big profits—if successful. Jewel smuggling, however, like any
smuggling designed merely to evade duties, was confined to a
comparatively small professional class, with now and then an
occasional traveler who attempted to bring in something for
his own use. When the Harrison law put an absolute ban on the
importation of narcotics except for medicinal use, it opened a
new field that put smuggling on its modern, highly organized,
and desperate basis. The drug smugglers were often addicts,
ready to go to any lengths to bring in the “dope” they craved.
About the same time, the Asiatic exclusion act started the
alien-smuggling business on an organized scale, through the
willingness of people from China and Southeast Asia to pay as
high as $200 to $500 each to get into the United States. The
so-called gentlemen’s agreement with Japan opened up a field
for the occasional smuggling
of Japanese laborers—a field
that has been greatly enlarged
since the passage of the recent
exclusion act. It remained,
however, for the Prohibition
law to put smuggling on a plane
where thousands of men are
employed in trying to outwit
the government, and more
thousands to enforce the law.
Everything from oceangoing
steamships to rowboats and
from fleets of fa st automobiles
to airplanes was impressed
into service. The new order
came so suddenly that there
was no international law to
cover it, and until new treaties
were negotiated, the govern-
ment faced a losing fight at
times.
Until an agreement was
reached with Canada by
which the sister country has
taken steps to block violations
of our law, it was not unusual
for the skipper of a small row-Model Village Is Burned
to Amuse Crowds
NOVEMBER 1915
Have a Smoke...
IF YOU CAN FIND THE CIGARETTES!
OCTOBER 1934AUGUST
1939