100 years ago in Spokane: All the booze in Washington made its prohibition chief quit in frustration

Donald A. McDonald, the chief federal Prohibition officer for Washington state, turned in his resignation largely because he believed the bootleggers were winning.

For every bootlegger arrested, he said, two new bootleggers sprang up “out of the earth.” Without a “large corps of men and a fleet of ships,” enforcing the federal Prohibition law in the state was nearly hopeless.

Chief McDonald was in Spokane inspecting drug stores in the interim. He told Spokane reporters the only solution would be more stringent laws.

“The bootleggers and whisky runners and moonshiners don’t care a snap of the finger for a fine,” McDonald said. “They do balk at a jail sentence, however.”

McDonald said liquor consumption was increasing. He also noted the street price of whisky, gin, cognac and other liquors was dropping from an “enormous surplus.” That’s because bootleggers had been so successful in importing vast quantities of liquor into the state, mostly from Canada.

On the state’s West Side, most booze arrived by boat. On the East Side, it arrived via “automobile, railroad train, pack train and airplane.”

“Canadian distilleries are working 24-hour shifts,” he said. “ The fences will have to be built high and strong, or else the American bootlegger will take them as though they were papier-mache.”

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(From the Associated Press)

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