How to remove those standard American brands, with their honest labels, from the market?—that was the problem which the leaders of the Jewish compounding business tackled. The first resort was, characteristically, to trickery. Shipments of pure goods would be sidetracked somewhere en route, while the rectifiers drew off half the whisky and refilled the barrels with mixed compounds. People who have been amazed at the stunts of the bootleggers—the sidetracking of whisky shipments, the “robbery” of loaded trucks, and so on—would not be so surprised if they knew that every trick was used by the compounders of bad liquor twenty years ago! It was Jewish then, as it is Jewish now, but no one dared say so. Merely to list the tricks would require too much space. It was a nasty business from any point of view. But still the standard brands held their place in public confidence. The Jew who claims to be the superior of the American in skill did not think of making a better whisky and thus winning the market; he thought to get rid of the better whisky that the vicious, adulterated product might own the field. It was the day of Trusts. Big Business was amalgamating. It occurred to the leaders of the compounding business that if they could sweep all the honest distilleries into a combine with all the backroom rectifying places, put them all under one management and run down the quality of famous brands to the standard of cheap ones—cashing in on the names of the brands, and doubly profiting by decreasing the cost which quality requires—they could thus accomplish in a financial way what had been formerly tried by less respectable methods. The inception of the idea of a “whisky combine” was legitimate. The Kentucky distillers (who must at all times be distinguished from compounders and rectifiers) endeavored in 1898 to establish a combination that would unite all the legitimate distilleries in the fight against the flood of counterfeit whisky. It is, however, significant that there was not enough capital in the legitimate whisky business to finance the plan. But when the idea was picked up by the makers of spurious liquor, there were millions of dollars at their command—just as today, with industry suffering, there are millions of Jewish capital at the disposal of the motion picture business! In the Louisville _Courier-Journal_, February, 1899, the story of the first operations toward a combine is told, the language being inflated, of course, that hesitant distilleries might be stampeded. “Absorbed Kentucky Distilleries in a Mammoth Combine. Capital Stock $32,000,000. Some of the Biggest Plants in the State Involved. Sixteen in Louisville. Controls 90 per cent of the Product and Nearly All Standard Brands.” “Levy Mayer, of Chicago, has acted as counsel in the drawing up of the papers. He becomes the general counsel of the new company.”