shown that the federal government could play a decisive role in the improvement of the human race.  By the end of the century, these highly motivated reformers thought they could see the millennium—a chance to do away with, not just corruption, but evil itself.  All they had to do was pass the right laws and humanity would purify itself.

When McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt unexpectedly mounted to the throttle of this powerful social dynamo.  One of his first moves was to dust off the all-but-forgotten Sherman Anti-Trust Act and go after major-league Monopoly players Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman and Hill.  The roar of public approval enabled him to make an end run around a surprised Congress, and over the next seven years he would change the country so profoundly that his face would wind up on the side of Mt. Rushmore.^[1] 

For the average upstanding American, the most visible evil of the day was the saloon, filled with brawling immigrants whose votes could be bought for a pint of beer.  Here was the social sinkhole where the working man spent his paycheck, then went home in a stupor to beat the wife and kids.  Eliminate the saloon—no, eliminate alcohol—and you would dry up the tap root of crime and human weakness.^[2] By the end of Roosevelt’s second term, seven states already had prohibition laws on the books and the groundswell was clearly building to outlaw alcohol nationwide.

It was in this collision of social reform and religious fundamentalism that the narcotics issue first came to focus in the United States.  Another time, another place, and the results might have been far different, but at this moment it would only take a handful of chance meetings to profoundly alter world history.

May first, 1908 was a blustery Friday in Washington with broken clouds scudding in from the northwest. An intense cold front had moved up the Ohio Valley the night before and there