302 Singing Valleys 



whiskey business boomed. More than one man in the com 

 belt bought corn and rye cheap, and distilled it for sale in 

 Maine and other dry states. A lot of them got rich on the 

 profits. 



One of these "mail-order distillers" developed a sales tech- 

 nique to make modern advertising men gasp in amazement. 

 He had a mailing list of likely prospects in various dry areas 

 of the country. By experience it was found that ministers, 

 Church deacons and merchants whose wives were prominent 

 in W.C.T.U. circles had the least sales resistance. A letter was 

 sent to each person on the list telling the merits of the firm's 

 "Number One/' at four dollars the gallon, by express collect. 

 A plain wrapper was promised. "Impossible to detect from 

 maple syrup." 



A month later, those on the list who had not sent in their 

 U.S. postal money orders for four dollars received another 

 letter which extolled "Number Two," at two dollars and a half 

 the gallon. Actually "Number One" and "Number Two" came 

 from the same vat. "Number Two" also could be sent in a 

 plain package. 



Thirty days after this broadside, all those who still showed 

 sales resistance received a letter from Pioneer Gray. A picture 

 of the pioneer, wearing a sixteen-inch beard and a fringed 

 buckskin shirt, and leaning on a long-barreled rifle, adorned 

 the letterhead. Pioneer Gray wrote in a forthright, folksy style. 

 He reminded his correspondents that his pappy had made 

 right good corn whiskey, and he continued to uphold the fam- 

 ily tradition. The products of Pioneer Gray's still sold at one 

 dollar the gallon. 



When the originator of this sales plan died, he left a for- 

 tune amounting to close to six million dollars, all of it 

 gathered in by mail. 



Some time during the late seventies, an agent of the Internal 

 Revenue Service reported that there were no fewer than three 

 thousand stills, of a capacity of from ten to fifty gallons a day, 

 being operated without a license in the southern mountain 



