"Smoke"

-c-PROHIBITION

Once famed for its nightly swarm of bums staggering from one swinging door to another, Manhattan's Bowery has been a comparatively sober thoroughfare since Prohibition. The bums have been lounging in speakeasies, drugstores, paintshops where "smoke" (colored, usually poisonous, alcohol) could be purchased for 15-c- the glass, 50-c- the pint. Last week the Bowery bums were on the street again, pitifully wandering, finding neither swinging doors nor "holes in the wall."

Many a Bowery "smoke joint" was closed last week by the local Prohibition Administrator, Major Maurice Campbell; many another closed through fear. Thirty purveyors of cheap alcohol were held under $2,500 bail for arraignment before a Federal grand jury. In almost every case, the alcohol in evidence was of the type used to keep automobile radiators from freezing. Despite the reassuring names of some "smoke" salesmen (Mike Whiskey, Frank Barri), almost all 30 were dealing in liquid death.

Records show that "smoke" fatalities in the Bowery district average one man per day since May 10. This led Major Campbell to take his men downtown. During the raids, Bartender Sam Liebreman, finding a corpse in his speakeasy, looked its burned lips over, telephoned police to come carry it away. He showed officers his own 17-gal. stock of 15-c- liquor, protested : "It's all okay, what I been selling. He got it somewhere else. Have a drink?"

Editorialists lauded Major Campbell's change from showily raiding clubs, nightclubs and hotels to doing "useful work" in the areas where liquor is not imported but is made from alcohol denatured or poisoned by the U. S. Government. In many a shop the agents bought drinks (two agents, though warned, went to bed with headaches) served directly from a can labelled "Denatured alcohol--Poison."

Dapper Mayor James John Walker, much exercised over the deaths in his city, cried: "First degree murder and the electric chair are too good for ['smoke' sellers]. If I had a club I would hit on the head myself any man who sold poison liquor, and I would not wait for a policeman. I said poisonous liquor. ... It is a violation of the Constitution to sell [any] liquor, but we might stagger through that."

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