Evening Star Newspaper, February 16, 1930, Page 86

badge and began to plan his campaign. He Was the intelligence officér and chief of the scouting division, the strategist and tactician of this master battle. He knew every hummock and creek in Hell Hole Swamp like a subway guards knows Times Square station. ON September 3, 1926, the Coast Guard cut- ter Yamacraw entered Charleston Harbor with 100 deputies, mobilized from many States to take part in the gigantic raid. The utmost secrecy was to be observed. The men were placed in automobiles, and the next day they invaded Berkeley County. Straight to Hell Hole Swamp they headed, following the eagle-eyed McKnight. Unerringly the king of the boot- leggers entered his former domain, this time fiying the colors of law and order. Without hesitation he threaded that labyrinth of paths and tracks over which he had been wont to carry his whisky to market. Through sand and mud and brush and bog he led his troops into the bootleggers’ lairs. The raid lasted two days. Thirty-three men Were arrested, among them H. S. Gamble, sheriff of the neighboring county of Williams- burg, and a former deputy named E. F. Hazle- don, who were charged with conspiracy to pecept bribes. Seventeen stills were seized, and with ax and hammer the officers beat the copper worms into shapeless pulps. They poured cut thousands of gallons of mash and whisky. The great wet swamp was dried at last. Or so thought the Government, as represented in Charleston. - But Hell Hole was not to be outdone. “Bootlegging continues,” says J. L. Poppen- heim, a State constable who is familiar with the section. “McKnight might have cleaned up part of the county, but it didn’t help much.” The officer was testifying before the United States Senate. For the investigating finger of Senator Brookhart's committee on Southern patronage had poked deep into Hell Hole Swamp and stifred up its whole colorful story. McKnight, before he retired at the end of a year from the service of the Government, had ;5 4 g { ; ; i ' A PTER zll, the Federal authorities and the McKnight episode furnished only one act in the continuous performance which has been 8 on in Berkeley County for the last seven E eight years, Gov. John G. Richards, a pious man, has pro- @uced several good laughs. He is the man who gained Nation-wide fame by diving into the musty statute books of South Carcolina and resurrecting a Sunday blue law before the year 1700. He placed a ban Sunday golf and sale of gasoline and for eral Sundays he had golfers dodging con- $tables and motorists filling their tanks over the week epd until the courts came to the rescue and granted injunctions against enforc- ing the ancient law. Gov. Richards is an ardent prohibitionist. He advocates punishing the buyer of whisky along with the seller. There- fore, Hell Hole Swamp, exuding an aroma of spirituous liquors which reeked throughout the Southeast, was a stench in his nostrils. “Berkeley County is a festering sore in South Carolina,” he said, and he cudgeled his brain to find a cure for that iniquitous spot. Not only the bootleggers irritated the governor’s sense of the fitness of things. There were county of- ficers, too, who were leaving undone things Which they ought to have done, and they were things which they certainly ought not to ve done. W, E. Woodward, a deputy sheriff, glving away seized whisky to his friends, fhe governor heard, and straigiway he called ® hearing in the capital at Columbia, Many things came out at that hearing, but the most amusing was that the governor himself had unwittingly been the means of transporting whisky across the State. The governor's son- in-law, it was testified, was one of.those whom Woodward had favored with his gifts, and the deputy testified that he had four gal- lon: in the governor’s ‘tar'when he was réturn- SUNDAY. STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FERRUARY 16, 1930. ing and start the fire-fighting within a short time of the outbreak of the fire. With the present fire-protection facilities a total of 42,864,000 acres, or 62 per cent of the total national forest area of the four Western districts, is not provided with adequate hour control. This huge area without sufficient fire protection is in the aggregate one-third larger than the State of Louisiana or slightly larger than the State of Washington. In the northern district 56 per cent of the total area lacks provisions for hour control, in the inter- mountain district, 35 per cent; in the California district, 76 per cent, and in the North Pacific, 60 per cent. One essential in the establishment of safe- hour control is a system of roads and trails that will make all areas quickly accessible. A study just completed shows that in four Western districts a total of 17,757,331 acres, or an area one-half the size of Iowa or three times the size of New Hampshire, is still with- out roads and trails. It is estimated that 33,605 miles of trails alone are still needed in the four districts to complete the requirements for hour control, An adequate road system allows the motora ization of a national forest fire-fighting organi- zation and provides rapid service to the trails in the rougher regions. In the Northern Rocky Mountain district 16 per cent of the total national forest area lies 8 to 48 hours’ travel time away from the nearest existing road. Similar conditions prevail in the other Western _ district. For instance, in the Trinity and Klamath considered vital to effective Maj. Kelley of the Forestry now provided. At the present rate nine and one-half years to com- necessary telephone system. The average national forest fire guard now to protect 28,000 acres, or 44 square of forest. Sufficlent manpower is needed, according to Maj. Kelley, to bring this average down by at least 10,000 acres. The four dis- tricts at present employ a total of 2,223 regular fire guards during the fire season. To bring the manpowet up to the requirements of adequate hour control will require 1,569 ad- ditional guards, or a total of 3,792, Expanding Postal Business. IP postal receipts are indicative of expanding business conditions are turning for the better throughout the country. In a list of 50 selected cities all but seven showed an increase, Des, Moines, Towa, with 25.61 per cent, leading the way. This same list of 50 cities in 1928 showed 36 with a loss from the 1927 figures. New York led all the cities, with receipts of $7,603,003, and an added $1,172,298 from Brooklyn. Chicago was second with $6,542,301, followed by Pbiladelphia and Boston, the last two being comfortably over the $2,000,000 mark. Washington ranked sixteenth on the list with receipts of $697,092, a gain of 3.72 over 1928. Food Products in Storage. IF the production of butter should suddenly stop the total amount in cold storage, although twice as large as a year ago, would a week out. The stock, 1‘1;337.000 pounds, is nearly double the stock of last year, t stocks of cheese, frozen try and frozen beef are also larger than are 826,306,000 pounds 3 supplies of lamb, mutton d pork being below last year's figure, and e total down about 31,000,000 two men holding the keys. Not only the enemies of the governor in Berkeley County got into trouble. Sometimes his friends as well have run afoul of the law. Charges put his friend, Senator E. J. Dennis, in pretty hot water for a time. The Senator, in his righteous wrath aroused at the scandalous operations in Hell Hole Swamp, went to the governor- and asked for some State constables to help enforce the law there. He recommended the names of some excellent men who could help dry up that “festering sore.” Ome of the men was named Meyers, another was named Rourk. Another held a commission without pay as constable, His name was Anderson and he belonged to the old anti-McEnight faction. The men were duly appointed by the governor, but there was no noticeable decline in Berkeley's output Tnl Federal Government, having finished \ with the prosecution of the cases made by McKnight's famous clean-up raid, was looking for more business when it heard the murmur- ings of Ballentine and Woodward, whose heads were about to be chopped off by Gov. Richards. The real people in the whisky business, they testified in proceedings brought by the Federal authorities—if they The system, they said, was a tri-cornered affair by which the Dennis crowd was pillaging the bootleggers and the public alike. The cone . He could “arrange to have the cases dropped or continued indefinitely” for a consideration, they said, and the fees amounted to paying tribute to a “king of the rs.” .: special investigator and a special prosecut- the Dennis- ~Villeponteaux combination., The de= Mo Sopinete: parSOSS Sers Bt o bt eounty convene the Hell hole of Hell Hole have ht here as those from Christ Forest Resources of South. A GREAT future awaits the 11 Southerm States of Virginia, North and South Caro- lina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma if theyrlsemzmpthclroppormmtylnthe forest industry. ; The Federal Government estimates that there ;::wl:o.w “wu o!lylo!w land in these W, properly managed and pro- tected for future growth while the lumbering operations are carried on, will supply as much the land included tle else than forest be turned into a huge sum if employed. £ Handicaps in Soggy Fields. THE wet, soggy, poorly drained field which is of little value to a farmer has more than the heavy nature of its soil against it. Wet soil, of course, presents mechanical handicaps land that has been allowed idle or grow up to rank grass. Speaking of Purses. Frank; I suppose you found your trip $e “*Jred: Yes, and flatteriing; ‘too.