South American localities. In some Latin American republics cocaine, heroin and other drugs are neither prohibited nor restricted, and the coca leaf of Peru, Ecuador and the Andean lands is universally used by the Indian inhabitants and can be bought in any desired quantities. And many people do not realize that both the betel-nut and coca leaf habits are almost as injurious, as insiduous and as objectionable as any other narcotic using habit.

To be sure neither the leaf nor the nut are concentrated drugs, and the native who uses them constantly does not feel the bad effects as quickly as the addict who takes the cocaine, heroin or morphine in its commercial form. But the ultimate results are the same, and the man or woman who brings coca leaves or betel-nuts into the country is no better than he who smuggles in opium, cocaine or any other recognized narcotic that is prohibited. And yet, but a short time ago, an American dentist, a woman who had been visiting South America, spoke in a newspaper interview of the fine teeth of the Indians and Mestizos, and declaring this was due to their habit of chewing the coca leaf, enthusiastically recommended the universal use of the drug-filled leaf by Americans! Yet this leaf is that of the plant from which cocaine is obtained, and the well meaning but woefully ignorant female dentist was broadcasting a suggestion which, if carried out, would result in countless

thousands of persons become drug addicts! And who can say what dire results may not already have resulted from this? The importation of coca is forbidden, along with other narcotics, and no doubt many, if not most, of the customs officers know this. But how many of these men would know a coca leaf if they saw it? How many search the baggage of passengers from South America for these leaves? And what is to prevent them from being smuggled in? A dry leaf, thousands of dry leaves, under certain conditions would excite no comment, and while the true drug-addict would find little solace or satisfaction in the mild narcotic obtainable from the raw leaves, their use would pave the way for thousands of new recruits to the already startlingly large army of drug fiends in the land. Despite every precaution of the officials drugs do come in, enough drugs to fill the demand, enough to maintain countless miserable beings in their pitiable condition, and to bring tidy incomes if not fortunes to the hands of the utterly unspeakable scoundrels who traffic in human woes and lives by their rascality.

It is not fear of the law that prevents more men from becoming drug smugglers, for it is doubtful if any smuggler ever hesitated because of the danger of getting caught. It is not lack of profits to be made, for it is questionable if any class of contraband promises greater profits than narcotics.

It is not that they cannot be obtained overseas for they can be. And it is not lack of opportunity for the rum-running fleet off our coast offers every opportunity. No, it is merely because smugglers are not utterly bad, not absolutely depraved; because some things are beneath the worst of men; because a man may be a rum runner, a smuggler, may even be a pseudo-pirate and ready to take a fellow man's life if need be, and yet will not aid in spreading the worst of all plagues any more than he would traffic in flesh and blood and would turn slaver.

Indeed, of the two, the slaver is or was a better man in many ways than the drug smuggler, which brings us to the subject of the slave smugglers, who may quite fittingly be classed among the most despicable of their calling.

Few people know or will believe to what extent slave smugglers carried on their trade until quite recently. I am not referring to the Oriental slavers or the Arabian slave smugglers, who still flourish to some extent in Africa and the East, nor to the white slavers, but to Anglo-Saxons, Americans, straight-laced Yankees who dealt in African slaves and smuggled their human cargoes into southern ports. Great Britain and France abolished slavery in their West Indian and other colonies long before our Civil War, and our government prohibited the importation of slaves into the

United States and declared them contraband, years before abolition became an important factor in our politics. But slave owners in our southern states were, many of them, only too glad to acquire new additions to their stock without asking embarrassing questions, and the Spanish and Portuguese of the West Indies and South America had no compunctions about purchasing slaves. As a result, a shipmaster who could successfully bring a cargo of "black ivory" across the Atlantic from Africa was sure of a ready market for his contraband, and enormous profits from his venture.

To be sure, the risks were tremendous. British corvettes and French men-of-war were constantly cruising off the African coasts and in West Indian waters, ever on the watch for slave smugglers, and our southern ports were well guarded. It was easy enough for a ship to go to Africa; just as easy, or almost as easy, to secure the miserable black wretches offered for sale, but once she was away from shore, danger beset her at every turn. If she got safely to sea and ran the gauntlet of the naval vessels there were the perils of the sea to face, tropical storms and long flat calms under an equatorial sun, things which, to an ordinary ship, meant little, but to the slave runner might spell disaster and loss. With her hold fairly packed with the sweltering, vermin-infested, filth covered, suffering blacks; with men, women and

children deathly sick, weak from hardships, often covered with festering sores and ulcers from undressed wounds and chafing iron shackles, a slave ship was a floating hell, and bad enough, God knows, in good weather. But try and imagine what it would be in a terrific storm or a roasting calm. Try to picture the miserable wretches confined under battened-down hatches, as the ship pitched and rolled and drove her bows thundering into the waves, as cataracts of water roared onto her decks and timbers creaked and planks strained. Try to visualize them in the dark, noisome, unventilated hold or 'tween-decks, hundreds of them; terrified, sick, suffering unspeakable agonies without food or water; knowing that if the ship foundered or sprung a leak they would be drowned like rats; moaning, shrieking in the stygian blackness. And try if you can to imagine what that reeking ship was like when the sun beat down from a brassy, cloudless sky and the sails slatted idly against masts and yards for day after day; when the pitch oozed from deck seams, and the crew, stripped to the waist, panted and roasted as they swashed water on the planks to keep their feet from blistering. Think what the condition of the human freight must have been on such days, of the hold where no breath of air could reach and with the temperature on deck over one hundred degrees in the shade. But it was not of such things, of the