The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-07-18
MORE DRINKS
NOW THAN EVER
But the Serious Offenders Are
Less Than 0ne-HaIf---TW0
Weeks Comparison.

According to the number of arrests
| for drunkenness for the first two weeks
of this month, since the new liquor
law has gone into effect, and the cor
responding two weeks of year ago,
| the results of temperance tending legis-
| lation has been disastrous, but the num-
! Der of arrests for offenses resulting
| from the use of intoxicants shows an
astonishing decrease. An explanation
of the Increased number of DRINKS
booked is supplied in the known fact
that the police now put under prompt
arrest all who are noisily drunk in
public and do not leave them to en-
gage in assaults, ARRAYS and other more
serious offenses before calling for the
hurrv-up wagon. This accounts also
for the decrease in the number of ar
rests for the last named violations of
the law.
Between July l and Is, 1906, the
record shows twenty-five on the police
station blotter charged with drunken
ness; for the same period this year
the number of arrests are nearly double
that, forty-two in all. This is at the
receiving end of the station. In the
police court records the difference is
still greater, for the reason that once
a man is booked now he has to face
Judge Whitney to answer the charge
or jump his bail.
Assault and battery cases, which in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred have
their origin in the wine that is red
with logwood-and the spirit that
mocketh, the first two weeks of tho
fiscal year of 1906 produced twenty
three. The first two weeks of the
present month had only twelve to ac.
count for, a falling off of one-half.
deadly weapons, disappeared this year;
last year for the same period they
totalled seven. Thus while the DRINKS
stand as twenty-five to forty-two in
favor of the days of dago red, the
assaults and attempts to murder have
dwindled from thirty to seven.
In connection with the decrease IN
the number of licenses issued in the
Palama and Aala districts and the
subsequent elimination of competition,
the price of drinks has gone up. No
more is the beaker brimmed with dago
red at five a brim. 1t is ten cents
or nothing, and this is one of the
things that some of the habitues of
the joints nurse as grudge against
the license board Instead of a two
bit piece being good any hour of the
day and most hours of the night for
a down and out jag it now only buys a
mild stimulator and the result is that
the sorrows that were drowned for the
time being now float around on the
surface unless the amount that goes in
to the cash register is doubled. The |
around the fishmarket is
very marked also.
The proprietors of the majority of |
the saloons now running are privately |
very much in favor of the new law
and inclined to think that the license
commissioners have not been bit too
strict in their Interpretation of what
was a good place to let run and what
to close down. 1t is natural that they
should think so as the increased sales
in these places has been very salts |
factory. In the meetings of the saloon
keepers association and in public
places the same proprietors do not dis
play the same satisfaction either with
the law or the license board, because
it would be rubbing it in beyond the
safe limits on those of the apron and
mallet who failed to pass through the
needle s eve. As the law has worked
out so far it is plain to those in the
business that their licenses now are
valuable assets ana worth while keep
ing, even if some of the requirements
of the commissioners seem to be nag
ging. With the certainty that for vio-
lation of the terms of their licenses
this asset will be taken away by the
board, from whose action there is no
appeal, the saloonkeepers are going to
obey the law to the letter. When the
securing of license needed only the
price the value of it was nothing; now
when the price is the least of the
things considered in the granting of
saloon privileges the value of the IL
cense is considerable.
--s' 60