| OCR Text |
Show The most important field of operations has been in the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, for which exclusively the Congress had set apart $15,000 of the total appropriation of .$25,000. To this field Special Officer William E. Johnson was assigned. He was selected for appointment because he had already proved not only his capacity for the sort of work to be demanded of him, but his absolute con-tempt for danger in the performance of. a difficult task. He entered upon duty in the Indian Territory early in Augnst, 1906, and soon discovered that one of the most serious obstacles in his way was the congested condition of business in the courts. Owing to the rapid development of the Territory, the volume of this business had far outstripped the machinery provided for disposing of it. On the dockets of the United States courts in the four districts of the Indian Territory there were approximately 6,000 criminal cases pending besides an equal multitude of civil cases, and, with only eight judges to handle everything, the end was far to seek. Most of the railway companies had rules forbidding the shipment of intoxicating liquors into the Territory; but such rules, owing to the fierce competition between the r,oads, had fallen into general dis-use. A great quantity of spirituous liquors was coming in by express without hindrance, except as individual United States marshals and their deputies made occasional seizures, and these sporadic checks accomplished little of permanent value. Brewers outside of the Territory also were openly shipping in low-grade beers under various aliases, such as Uno, Ino, Longhorn, Mistletoe, Non Tox, Shorthorn, Pablo, Statehood, ,Waulresha, Re-veille, Hiawatha, Tin Top, etc. These would contain at first less than 2 per cent of alcohol; but after a market for them had.been estab-lished, the percentage would generally be raised to about that of full-strength beer. The outside wholesalers, moreover, had a trick of shipping in large quantities of whisky concealed in their ship-ments of low-grade beers; and the retail dealers inside of the Terri-tory would use the innocent-appearing beers as a cloak under which to conduct, in one way and another, a lively traffic in whisky. Most of the "joints" at which the low-grade beers were. sold were connected with gambling houses and other resorts of vice. The mar-shals and district attorneys had made several attempts to cope with this evil, usually with temporary success; but as these attempts were not made in all the districts simultaneously, and the congested con-dition of the courts prevented their handling in an effective manner . - such cases as they had, a joint keeper would be able to secure a foot-hold in one district, and use that as a base for reaching into all the other districts. At the time of Mr. Johnson's arrival, the low-grade beer joints were in operation substantially without hindrance in nearly every part of the Territory, and 353 of them were paying special taxes to |
