You just never know what you might find out when you look at the small print.
I have seen many references to The Judge's drinking habits - most often to excess.
The US prohibition started in 1920 and continued through to 1933. Life must have been miserable for alcoholics and pushed many to create their own booze.
Prohibition In the United States (1920-1933) was the era during which the United States Constitution outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. Wiki
But an enterprizing man like Rutherford found a way around the prohibition. He didn't make it and he didn't sell it but he sure enough had people transporting it for him. The book The Four Presidents . . . by Gruss states:
In a letter dated April 1, 1937, the Society's former Branch Servant for Canada, Walter F. Salter, issued an indictment not only of Rutherford's drinking, lavish lifestyle, insensitivity and abuse of others, claimed authority, and hypocrisy, but also his own involvement in spending thousands of dollars of the Sociey's money in purchasing liquor for hte Judge. Some exerpts from the letter follow:
. . . I, at your orders, would purchase cases of whiskey at $60.00 a case, and cases of brandy and other liquors, to say nothing of untold cases of beer.
Whiskey at sixty dollars a case during the Depression qwas an extremely expensive whiskey... To put it in perspective, grown men in the northern industriel stateswere making $25.00 per week.
So what is the point of all this Darned if I can remember. Oh yeah. The small print
May 1, 1921: The Quebec government takes control of liquor; with near universal prohibition in North America, Quebec is the only ``wet`` jurisdiction on the continent for a time. Metronews `This Day in History`
As a lawyer he knew he was breaking the law and getting other people to break the law so he could live well
