Aspects of Jewish power in the United States $b : volume IV of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a fourth selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent

To those who have been surprised and confounded by the widespread evidence, which even the newspapers have been unable to suppress, that the bulk of the organized bootlegging which is being carried on in this country is in the hands of Jews, it would have been less of a surprise had they known the liquor history of this country.

The claim made for the Jews, that they are a sober people, is undoubtedly true, but that has not prevented two facts concerning them, namely, that they usually constitute the liquor dealers of the countries where they live in numbers, and that in the United States they are the only people exempted from the operations of the Prohibition law.

Here as elsewhere the principle holds true that “the Jew is the key.” The demoralization which struck the liquor business, causing its downfall, and the demoralization which has struck Prohibition enforcement for a time, cannot be understood without a study of the racial elements which contributed to both phenomena. If in what follows the Jews find objectionable elements, they should remember that their own people put them there. It is impossible to doubt that if the organized Jews of the United States were to make one-thousandth of the protest against the illegal liquor activities of their own people that they make against the perfectly legal and morally justifiable exposures being made in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, the result would be not only favorable but immediate.

There was a time when the term “whisky” had a much more respectable connotation than it has today. There was a time when to use whisky and even to make it, were customs sanctioned by the better class of public opinion.

It is a common explanation of the difference between then and now, that people of the latter period became more sensitive morally than their forbears, that whereas the previous generation guzzled its whisky, innocently oblivious of the evil in it, the latter generation developed a stronger moral discrimination and banned the custom.

The truth is this: the people did not become better; the whisky became worse. When the entire story of the people’s justifiable indignation is written, the competent historian will trace along with the people’s rising disgust, the whisky’s decreasing quality.

Attention to this matter will materially assist an understanding of the fact that Jews and bootlegging are so continuously and prominently connected in the public prints these days.

Readers of the old romances know how proud the master was of his wines. Vintages ripened under certain skies, on certain hills, where certain waters flowed, with cellarage in certain soils, had a faculty of aging gracefully, mellowing to a smoothness and purity and desirableness that made for cheer and health without the alloy of sordid inebriety. The bouquet of wine, the perfected essence of the grape subjected to the further courses of nature, has been a theme of praise for centuries. If it were uttered today the source of the utterance would be suspected, and very probably with good reason, of being in pay of the “wets.” For the vile stuff which civilization threw out is not at all the wine of popular custom and century-long esteem.

Nevertheless, it is not difficult for even a modern to grasp the fact that there was an art in making wine and strong drink, in which art men took pride. That art required time, experience, a love of good quality.

It is a little difficult to speak of this art in connection with whisky—wine being a more poetic word—yet it is a matter of knowledge that three places in the world have devoted to the production of whisky the same spirit which France and Portugal devoted to their wines. These three districts are Glenlivet in Scotland, the region of Dublin in Ireland, and the Blue-Grass region of Kentucky. Why in these three regions? First, because there were men—non-Jews, of course—who were willing to wait ten years to produce a good article. Second, the waters of these regions are of a quality which is beautifully adapted to the making of pure goods. Pure whisky, it should be remembered, is a vegetable product matured by natural forces and no other. Grain, water and time—not even artificial heat added, nor any other thing—completes the best whisky product.

In older times in America there were men who were as choice of their whiskies as of their horses or books. There was then such a thing as quality. But there was no such thing as delirium tremens. That came later, with the disappearance of pure whisky. A distiller seldom grew rich—he was too engrossed in maintaining the quality of his product; and it consumed much time.

There were certain brands known nationally because of their mildness and purity—purest wine of the choicest grapes, aged in the best adapted cellars, was not more mild or pure. There are names that remain until this day—Pepper, Crow, Taylor, and others—the names of men who took time and pains, whose names became “brands” which guaranteed quality and purity. These men were distillers in the true sense, not manufacturers nor compounders, but distillers in a time when distilling was both a science and an art, and not a mere name to conceal a gigantic fraud on the public.

In time to come, when the people’s justifiable moral indignation will permit a study of the steps by which the reputation of whisky came to its present low degree, they will see how much better it would have been, how much more efficacious and clarifying, if the attack on whisky had included an exposure of the men who had driven whisky out of the country and were selling rank poison as a substitute. The saloon, the brewer, the man who used strong drink were all of them made the target for attack; the Jews who demoralized the whole business went on collecting their enormous and illegitimate profits without so much as their identity being revealed.

Whisky ceased to be whisky and beer grew less like beer; the results upon humanity became apparent and deplorable. So society raised the license fee and increased the restrictions. To meet this, the Jewish compounders turned out still cheaper stuff, and still more vicious mixtures. Licenses went up, and quality went down; the Jewish compounders always getting a larger margin of profit. And through the long, long fight, no one, with one or two notable exceptions, had the sense and the courage to point a finger at the solid racial phalanx lined up behind the whole rotten combination.

Distilling is one of the long list of businesses which has been ruined by Jewish monopoly. Those who favor Prohibition will probably thank the Jew for his work in that direction. It may be that the Jew is destiny’s agent to demoralize the business that must pass away. But set against that the fact that it is Jewish influence that demoralizes Prohibition, too, and both “wets” and “drys” have an interesting situation to consider.

In general, the Jews are on the side of liquor and always have been. They are the steadiest drinkers of all. That is why they were able to secure exemption from the Prohibition laws; their religious ceremonies require them to drink an amount which the law has considered to equal ten gallons a year. And so the Prohibition law of the United States—a part of the Constitution of the United States—is made legally ineffective to the extent of ten gallons a year a Jew. The amount, of course, is very much more; it is always easy to get 100 gallons through a 10-gallon loophole. In fact, thousands of gallons have come through that 10-gallon loophole.

It will come to many people as new knowledge that the liquor business of the world has been in the hands of Jews. In the United States the liquor business was almost exclusively in the hands of Jews for 25 years previous to Prohibition, during the period, in fact, when the liquor trade was giving point and confirmation to Prohibition arguments. This knowledge has an important bearing on the interpretation of our times.

In the volume, “The Conquering Jew,” published by Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1916, John Foster Fraser writes:

“The Jews are masters of the whisky trade in the United States. Eighty per cent of the members of the National Liquor Dealers’ Association are Jews. It has been shown that 60 per cent of the business of distilling and wholesale trade in whisky is in the hands of the Jews. As middlemen they control the wine product of California. Jews visit the tobacco-growing States and buy up nearly all the leaf tobacco, so that the great tobacco companies have to buy the raw product from them. The Jews have a grip on the cigar trade. The American Tobacco Company manufactures about 15 per cent of the cigars smoked in the United States. The Jews provide the rest.”

It was also true in Russia, Poland, Rumania. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that “The establishment of the government liquor monopoly (in Russia in 1896) deprived thousands of Jewish families of a livelihood.” They controlled the liquor traffic, the vodka business which undermined Russia. The government made the liquor business a national monopoly in order to abolish it, which was done. Liquor in Russia was Jewish, as the Encyclopedia testifies. Anyone reading carefully the article on Russia, especially pages 527 and 559 in the Jewish Encyclopedia, will be in no doubt as to the fact. In Rumania the whole “Jewish Question” was the liquor question. The land of the peasants came into control of the liquor sellers, and the business of handling liquors was a strict Jewish monopoly for years. In Poland the same was true. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the United States whisky also became Jewish.

For convenience in detailing this story, most of the observations made will center in the state of Kentucky. Almost every one of age knows the phrase “fine old Kentucky whiskies.” It was once a phrase that meant something. Kentucky produced, in her limestone regions, the kind of water that served best with the grain ingredients of whisky. The word “Bourbon,” known mostly as a kind of whisky, is really the name of a county in Kentucky where “Bourbon whisky” was first made. How profoundly the region in which whisky is manufactured affects the product may be gathered from the fact that a primitive Kentucky distiller named Shields, who became famous for a brand of Bourbon made from the waters of Glen’s Creek, conceived the idea of lowering his costs by transferring his distillery to Illinois, where he would be nearer the rich cornfields. He was disappointed. Illinois water would not make Bourbon. “The rule of the region” is supreme. Jamaica rum owes its characteristic to the waters of Jamaica. Port wine is best produced in the region of Duro in Portugal, champagne in the region of Rheims in France, and beer in Bavaria. And so, in Kentucky there was the right combination of elements which made the whisky product of that state world famous.

An alcoholic spirit from grain may be made in any climate and by many methods. Neutral spirits, high wines and alcohol, are not indigenous anywhere. They can be made in any back room or cellar, in very little time. Little care is required. A concoction of drugs and spirits, properly colored and flavored, fraudulently labeled “whisky” and passed out over the bar, is a crime against the art of distilling, against the human nervous system, and against society.