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creatures from Africa and the Orient. Some were procured with little effort by purchase, others were presented as gifts by Sultans and Shieks, but not a few were obtained by smuggling the beasts out of countries where their exportation was prohibited. And speaking of war, the conflicts of states and nations have always been hailed with delight by smugglers, for war offers opportunities for smuggling that can never exist in times of peace.

If ports are blockaded, as the ports of the Confederate States during our Civil War, there are fortunes to be made in running the blockade, which after all is merely smuggling on an heroic and daring scale. And though blockade running is a most perilous undertaking, yet the rewards, if the runners are successful, are so immense that any risk will be taken. Indeed, blockade running during the Civil War was considered quite a legitimate and honorable profession, and immense fortunes were made by many a northerner by carrying supplies into southern ports and thus traitorously aiding the enemy. Nassau, the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Mexican Gulf ports became headquarters of these men. Their swift ships filled the harbors, great warehouses were packed to overflowing with goods, men flocked to the spots by thousands, a business such as the tiny, sleepy towns had never dreamed of, was built up, and from almost unknown and unimportant settlements they were

transformed into wealthy, thriving marts of trade with millions pouring into their coffers. Even more alluring to the smuggling fraternity are the petty disagreements between small countries, states or factions. The frequent insurrections in the Latin American republics have ever been a source of delight and revenue to men of smuggling proclivities.

Indeed, many a revolution has been hatched out, fostered and encouraged by our own countrymen who, by so doing, paved a way for profitting immensely by gun running. For years Cuba, before she was freed from Spanish rule, was an almost steady source of revenue for the contrabandistas, or as they were called "filibusters" and such men as "Dynamite Johnny O'Brien," and others won not only fortune but fame by smuggling contraband arms and ammunition into the Pearl of the Antil

les. To give the devil his due, no doubt many of these daring men were partly, at least, actuated by altruistic motives and sympathy with the Cubans, for many of them not only risked freedom and life by smuggling but joined the patriots' forces and spilled their blood in the cause of Cuba Libre. But in the case of South and Central American revolutions there were no such lofty motives involved. It never made a cent's difference to the gun runners whether one faction or another held the reins of government in the turbulent republics, and the gun

smugglers were quite as ready to run in a cargo for the government as for the insurrectos. And they did not stop at guns and ammunition. Even steamships were smuggled out of United States' ports and into the harbors of our southern neighbors, despite every effort of our officials to prevent it, and despite the guns of our warships. That indeed was smuggling with a capital S, smuggling that would have been a credit to the most picturesque and famous smugglers of old, and the successful coup of the gun runners in getting a fully equipped cruiser, the Esmeralda, out of San Francisco and safely into a South American port after a thrilling chase by our naval vessels, formed an epoch in history and an adventure of the sea equal to any fiction. While those who confined their smuggling operations to running contraband of war no doubt considered themselves far from being smugglers, and probably salved their consciences, if they had any, by arguing that they were neither robbing Uncle Sam of duties nor injuring their own country, yet as a matter of fact, they were in many ways the most despicable of smugglers, for they robbed their country not only of vast sums of moneyexpended in efforts to enforce neutrality-but of human lives as well. Unquestionably those who illegally furnished the sinews of war to the insurrectionists in Mexico, the Villa and Madero factions, never realized what their acts would bring

upon their fellow countrymen or foresaw that the rifles and cartridges supplied to the Mexicans would be turned against Americans. But smugglers, whether they be mere gun runners or true smugglers, never count costs to others and have no consciences, and even after virtual war occurred between the Mexicans and the United States there were plenty of Americans who were ready and willing to make money by smuggling arms to the enemy.

Unlike many classes of law breakers, smugglers, as a rule of the professional class especially-appear to be wholly destitute of any moral sense or decency. The pirates had their good points, the buccaneers possessed many admirable qualities even a gunman or a common thug may be a patriotic citizen and, aside from disreputable tendencies along certain lines-a decent sort of chap. But as a rule the smuggler is lacking in everything but a desire to make money and, at times, a certain dare-deviltry. Traffic in human flesh is no more to them than traffic in silks or jewels, and even today slave smugglers exist and thrive. For long years after England, France and other countries had abolished slavery, Yankee seamen made a business of smuggling the blacks from Africa to the West Indies and South America, and still later ran contraband cargoes of slaves into our own southern states. Even as recently as 1865, even during our Civil

War, Yankee skippers carried on the nefarious trade and many a New England fortune was made on the profits of the slave trade, and many a New England family, whose members fought and died for the cause of abolition, had dabbled in running cargoes of "black ivory" across the Atlantic. Bad as it was, this phase of smuggling was made a thousand times worse by the unspeakable cruelty and brutality that marked it. A smuggler of inanimate merchandise may jettison his cargo of contraband, and no one but himself is the loser, but the smuggler of slaves when hard pressed became a wholesale murderer and relentlessly cast into the sea his cargo of shrieking, groaning human beings, men, women and children, to save his own worthless life or liberty.

And do not imagine for a minute that the slave smuggler is a being of the past. Wherever slavery exists,—in Africa, the Orient, in the South Seasthe slave smuggler will be found, and our own country is not immune. Girl slaves are still smuggled into the United States by the Chinese, and women, who are as much in bondage as any slave of antebellum days, are smuggled in and out by those whose souls are yellow, even if their skins are white.

But while all such things, all such articles and objects as I have mentioned-and countless more beside are at times contraband, and while all

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