Business: Rum Rush

(See front cover)

Not since President Harrison flung open the Oklahoma Indian Territory has the U. S. seen anything like what it will see next week when Prohibition is stricken from the Constitution. On that April morning in 1889 a surging column of men on foot, men on horseback, men in buggies, buckboards, dump-carts, whole families in covered wagons stretched across the prairie in a straight line. Men fought and cursed and jockeyed for a front position behind Federal troopers. At noon a bugle blast split the air. On to the old Indian lands swept 50,000 men, women, children, pioneers, drifters, squatters, scoundrels, in a mad stampede to stake out new homesteads. Before that day was done, horses had been shot, prairie fires were raging and men had been trampled to death. . . .

Last week the U. S. liquor industry was nerved for its deadline of Dec. 5, for a stampede into the virgin territory of a billion-dollar business. When Utah, Pennsylvania or Ohio sounded the bugle of Repeal, 20 states with one-half the U. S. population would automatically be open for liquor sales.