“Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin’ you? At the wust, s’posin’ they was convicted by your own evidence, they’d only git a month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for it? Hit’s all ’tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!”
“I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense about this moonshining business. I’d like to learn the plain truth about it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about personal affairs, and don’t want to learn incriminating details; but I would like to know how the business is conducted, and especially how it is regarded from the mountain people’s own point of view. I have already learned that a stranger’s life and property are safer here than they would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your country good to have that known. But I can’t say that there is no moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it. Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don’t seem ashamed of it.”
The man’s face turned an angry red.
“Mister, we-uns hain’t no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary thing we do. We’re poor; but we don’t ax no favors. We stay ’way up hyar in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along, he’s welcome to the best we’ve got, such as ’tis; but if he imposes on us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!”
“And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition.”
“Hit is, under some sarcumstances.”
My guest stretched his legs, and “jedgmatically” proceeded to enlighten me.
“Thar’s plenty o’ men and women grown, in these mountains, who don’t know that the Government is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt who commands two-three judges and a gang o’ revenue officers. They know thar’s a president, because the men folks’s voted for him, and the women folks’s seed his pictur. They’ve heered tell about the judges; and they’ve seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They believe in supportin’ the Government, because hit’s the law. Nobody refuses to pay his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar’. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on the dollar; and that’s all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten cents on twenty cents’ worth o’ liquor; and that’s robbin’ the people with a gun to their faces.
“Of course, I ain’t so ignorant as all that—I’ve traveled about the country, been to Asheville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o’ times—and I know the theory. Theory says ’t revenue is a tax on luxury. Waal, that’s all right—anything in reason. The big fellers that makes lots of money out o’ stillin’, and lives in luxury, ought to pay handsome for it. But who ever seen luxury cavortin’ around in these Smoky Mountains?”
