From  the  famous  wliiskey  ring  of  1874  to  tlie  pool  of  1881
and  the  trust  of  188T,  and  from  the  abandonment  of  that
"  trast "  dress  and  the  reorganization  into  one  corporation  in
1890  down  to  the  present,  this  private  regnlation  of  the  liquor
traffic  has  gone  on.  It  is  a  regulation  of  a  good  deal  more
than  the  llqnor  traffic.  Through  ite  control  of  alcohol  it  is  a
power  over  the  arts  and  sciences,  the  manufacture  and  the
preparation  of  medicines,  and  a  power  over  politics.  More
than  one  chapter  of  our  history  exhibits  the  government  itself
holding  to  these  rectifiers  relations  suggestive  of  anything  but
rectification.  The  report  of  the  investigatton  by  Congress  in
1893  notes  the  fact  that  on  the  strength  of  a  ramor  that  the
internal  -  revenue  tax  was  to  be  iacreased  by^  XTongress,  the
Trust  raised  its  prices  25  cents  a  gallon.  This  w^nld  amount
to  a  profit  of  $12,500,000  on  its  yearly  outpu^^'

By  Febrnary,  1888,  all  tlie  important  d»tillerieB  in  tlie
Northern  States — nearly  eighty — were  ii^fcie  T5*^*i  except-
ing two,  the  larger  of  which  was  iu^hic^gOf  The  cases  of
these  irreconcilable  competitors  were  set  for  eonsjdtiVation,  ac-
cording to  the  Chicago  Trihune'a  report,  at  a^jrfivatc  meeting
of  the  trustees  February  3d.  In  April  th^  Cliifi^o  distillery
firm  published  the  fact  that  they  had  canght  a  spy  of  the
Trust  in  their  works.     He  had  given  tbem  a  confession   in


SUPPLY  AND  DSJdAND,  AND  DTNAMITB  21

writing.  In  September  it  was  discovered  that  the  valve  of  a
vat  in  this  distillery  had  been  tampered  with  in  snch  a  way  as
to  have  caused  an  explosion  had  it  not  been  found  out  in  time.
