The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-21

dress. they put bamboo bottoms to the skirts and hung them up in the trees and halted them with dates and coa- counts to trap wild monkeys. What is an innocent luxury to one may be a dangerous snare to another. The per- tinency of this illustration may become more apparent as this series of articles develops.
 Pensacola is not city of large crimes. but of many little offenses. From police courts 1t appears that Pensacola has larger number of ar rests each year than either Jackson vile, Montgomery or Mobile. During the year 1905 there were in Jackson vile 3.271 arrests of all descriptions from which the city recelVed a revenue of sf3,O65 Montgomery for the same period had 4,45I with a revenue of Sf3.9e450. During the year 1905 Bir- mingham is credited with 9,795 arrests and the revenue from these arrests was s3l,676.T6. It may be well to state that the city court of Birming- ham-the police court---has Jurisdiction of misdemeanors throughout Jenerson county, concurrent with the two sec tions of the criminal court of Birming- ham, and consequently has a popula- tion of something over 100000 people to draw from. Pensacola during the year 1905 had 5.589 arrests and col- iected fines S16.040.75, exceeding both in number of arrests and the revenue raised from fines either of the other three cities of Jacksonville, Montgom- cry or Mobile, and doing over half as much in this line as Birmingham and suburbs. with 100000 population. But of this 55S9 arrests in Pensacola there were 15S foreigners, or residents Of otT ~. countries than the United States; 12S sSldiers and marines from the na- tvao hn mo a March and April, when the fleet was here, there were 1,411 arrests, nearly as many as for the five months pre- ceding. So presumably 60 per cent of this number must have been from the fleet or people brought here by its presence. Thus we have from different sourcs over 1900 arrests credited to the criminal records of Pensacola by a non resident population, which, under conditions do not properly belong to us.
 In 1895 Montgomery had sixty-six arrests of concealed weapons, Jackson vile fifty-four, while Pensacola only had thirty-seven. While Montgomery had 1906 cases of drunk. profane and obscene language. and disturbances of the peace of every kind, Pensacola had 1889 cases of drunk alone and D. eco cases of profane language. For the same years Jacksonville had LOTS drunks. Of profane and obscene lan- guage Jacksonville had only 26s cases. while Pensacola had i,234. If these records are criterion, then Pensacola Is the worst talking city in tho coun- try. I will not stop here to comment on this fact, but will reserve this sub ject for a future article.
 There are forty-one licensed places for selling liquor in Pensacola, besides some other places where it Is sold without license. There Is one saloon to every six hundred of our population including men, women and children. It is certainly convenient to drink in Pen sacola if people feel so inclined, and this may account. to some extent, Tor the large number of drunks to her dis credit on tho police records of the city.
 Convenience has much to do with the whiskey habit. Silas Simmons was a moonshiner and lived up in the Choctowatchie country. Uncle Si,' as he was called, set up a still in the smokehouse in one corner of his yard about twenty feet from his dwelling house Now the spring from which the family got drinking water was at the foot of the hill about hundred wards away. When Si was thirsty it was so much more convenient to go to the smoixehouse for q drink than to the spring, that he stopped drink ing water entirely. He boasted that he hadn't drunk no water in nineteen years"
 Mans original drink was branch water There are now more distilleries in the country than branches. and cer- tainly more beer used than there was before Milwaukee became famous
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