THE WHISKY KING.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 356, 3 August 1875, Page 3

THE WHISKY KING.

{Pall Mall Budget.) The latest “ new things in frauds” in the United States is the “ Whisky Ring frauds,” which appear to have been conducted on rather a large scale. The Ring, it is stated, was not only rich and powerful, but also “almost übiquitous.” Several officials in Government employment were its paid agents, and the corruption on which it thrived extended upwards and downwards through all branches of the Internal Revenue Service. Every movement towards investigation was instantly telegraphed from Washington to the leaders of the Ring. The Secretary of the Treasury found himself surrounded by spies. To get the evidence necessary to prove the frauds, new men had to be employed who were unknown to the Ring. The officials of the Internal Bureau were carefully kept in the dark as to what was going on, but the Ring, knowing that a storm was brewing, actually endeavored to foist upon the Secretary one of its own agents to insist in the investigation, and nearly succeeded in this ingenious scheme. On the 10th instant, however, the Government campaign against the Ring culminated in the seizure of more than thirty of the largest distilleries and rectifying houses in the West, The establishments seized were at St Louis. Chicago, and Milwaukee; but the ramifications of the Ring have extended far and wide in the east, west, and south. The profits of the Ring by the manufacture of “ crooked whisky,” as the illicitly distilled article is called, exceeded 1,000,000d01s a year, and a fixed percentage of these profits was paid regularly to the corrupted officials. For some years the Ring has grown in strength and wealth, and its overthrow has been as sudden as it was unexpected—an impression having prevailed that it was too powerful to be meddled with.