But it is not only the fact that the liquor business was controlled by Jews that assumes importance. That is a fact which no one will deny—not even the Jewish defenders. But it is the additional fact that there was spread over this country the machinery of a vicious system which while it was destined to ruin the liquor business—as perhaps it deserved to be ruined—also ruined hundreds of thousands of citizens who trusted that “pure and unadulterated” meant what the words were intended to convey. It would be a separate story to tell of all the manipulation of labels, the piracy of brand names, the conscienceless play upon the words “pure and unadulterated” of which the un-American “compounded liquor” combine was guilty. Of course, the stuff was “pure and unadulterated”—so is carbolic acid—but it was not whisky! There were law violations galore, and it was well enough recognized in the rectifying business as a regular practice to appropriate annually a certain sum to pay the fines that were bound to be assessed against it. A riot of adulteration and chicanery ensued, with whisky being made in many saloon cellars and the dangerous secrets of synthetic booze-making being peddled abroad among the customers of the trust. Presently the saloon men became aware of the fact that they were the goats of the game. Seldom was the Jew engaged in dishing out five-cent beers or ten-cent whiskies; it remained for the “boob Gentile” to do that; the Jew was at the wholesale end where the real profits were made. But it was the saloon man who took the brunt of the blame. The Jewish “distillers,” as the compounders and blenders of the Louisville and Peoria districts were called, wore silk hats and their respectability was unquestioned. The saloon men made an eleventh hour effort to save their business, but the stuff they were pouring out had not improved, and Prohibition came, sweeping the saloon away, but, as the sequel will show, not depriving the Jewish compounder of his profits. How much of the liquor business of the United States was in whisky and how much in rectified spirits? The Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, said: “_Most of the distilled liquors consumed as a beverage by the American people pass through rectifying houses._ The different classes of rectified spirits range from the cheapest concoctions of neutral spirits and drugs to the simple blending of young and old whisky.” Twenty years ago statistics showed that 80 per cent of the so-called whisky put up in the United States was imitation whisky. Chief Chemist Wiley, whose concern was not with the quantity but with the quality, gave it as his information “that over half the whisky in this country was compounded whisky. Less than half was genuine; and while they usually mix a little old whisky with it, they often sell it purely and simply as it is, whisky which has no claim to be called whisky under the real meaning of that term.”