tistics indicate in some degree the amazing growth of several important municipalities since the Federal census of 1920:

The growth of Florida, compared by one observer to the efforts of a precocious child to run before it walks, has undoubtedly resulted from the tourist rush. Yet many sections in the northern end of the State, settled and developed in antebellum days by a cotton and tobacco aristocracy centered about Tallahassee, when south Florida. was a howling wilderness, would exist comfortably without that stimulus. Lumber, cotton, tobacco, naval stores, and other fruits of manual labor provided a livelihood in that area long before the tourist era and continue to do so. Life in such sections is free from the glitter and glamor of east-coast resorts; the people are peaceable and law observing.

Life, however, strikes up a faster tempo in gay east-coast resorts Jike Miami, Palm Beach, and Daytona, where night clubs, transplanted from Broadway, luxurious gambling palaces, race tracks, and boxing stadia flourish. Quite naturally the presence of a freespending sporting class in these places creates a profitable liquor market, and notwithstanding efforts of Coast Guard, customs, and prohibition forces, foreign liquors are available in large quantities. Nature is strongly allied with the Florida rum smuggler. An extended coast line, measuring approximately 1,000 miles, honeycombed with small inlets and keys, points invitingly to wet Cuba, 90 miles distant from Key West, to British Bimini, equally close, and to Nassau, likewise not too far removed to make clandestine importing unprofitable. Government authorities wage constant warfare against the smuggler in Florida. Coast Guard forces maintain bases upon both the east and west coast, from which operate patrol boats both large and small. Customs authorities, too, engage in active patrol work, with a comparatively recent but highly effective border patrol organization, that operates with both small boats and automobiles. The prohibition special agency service is constantly engaged in investigations with respect to operations of foreign liquor importers. In spite of such concerted effort, however, the smuggling enterprise continues, sustained by the profitable market.

Jacksonville, second largest city in the State, lea ling lumber port of the South, gateway to practically all tourist resorts in Florida, harbors, during the rush period, a vast transient population. In addition it houses that restless seafaring element characteristic of important maritime communities. The flow of the winter tourist flood naturally carries with it a large criminal tide that, for the most part, halts en route at Jacksonville. As a consequence crime conditions in that city during the winter months are at a high point. A crusading, fearless, hard-hitting sheriff now holds forth there and

is making life miserable for liquor traffickers and other law violators. The local police force is likewise effective. A deputy prohibition administrator, efficient and experience, also functions in the same city with a highly effective force.

Liquor is available at Jacksonville at reasonable prices. Prostitution and other vices also prevail. But vigilant enforcement authorities, united in a vigorous and relentless coordinated drive, are making such illicit enterprises extremely hazardous.

Curiously enough, Florida is classed politically as a dry Commonwealth. It boasts a State prohibition law, a dry governor, a 100 per cent dry delegation in Congress, and repudiated the wet candidate for President in 1928. Numerous sheriffs, mayors, and other public officials in resorts where conditions are not, by any stretch of the imagination, like Cæsar's wife, espouse the cause of proh.bition and believe in vigorous enforcement thereof-at least during the drowsy summer months when the tourist army has departed. The tourist revenue to most of such communities-many of which heavily obligated themselves for public improvements during the real-estate boom-is vital, and truckling to that element apparently paramount. City fathers then, quite naturally, do not always look with favor upon crusades or law-enforcement movements that tend to divert revenues therefrom to other channels.

But unsatisfactory law-enforcement conditions do not prevail in all Florida coastal resorts. Some 200,000 serious, religious-minded farmers and small-town folk make St. Petersburg, on the west coast, an annual winter haven. This tourist class, older and more settled than that haunting the east coast, is strictly health perpetuating, has more regard for the hereafter, and scant interest in the frills that prevail on the opposite side of the State. Fishing, pitching horseshoes, old-fashioned hymn singing, and religious gatherings feature life in St. Petersburg, and enforcement conditions there reflect that manner of living.

But a few miles removed from the latter place, and in striking contrast thereto, is the city of Tampa, important west-coast shipping center, housing a large Cuban colony, employed, for the most part, in some 200 cigar factories established in that municipality, and responsible in a great measure for lax enforcement conditions prevalent there. Laxity on the part of local police and the sheriff are contributing factors, but the latter officials merely reflect the sentiment that exists in that city. In spite of unremitting efforts by an efficient but numerically inadequate customs land patrol, foreign liquor is plentiful there at moderate prices.

Further north along the west coast is Tarpon Springs, center of the sponge-fishing industry, seat of a sizeable Greek colony, onetime base for large-scale liquor and alien smuggling operatitons, but now engaged exclusively in legitimate enterprises. Vigilant Coast Guard and customs patrols have made smuggling activities there both hazardous and unprofitable. Small quantities of liquor undoubtedly still filter through this part, but such operations are conducted by individuals on a small scale.

This writer was driven by automobile from Tampa to Tallahassee, capital of the State, a distance of some 300 miles, and thence 200 additional miles to Pensacola, naval air base, important fishing center,

rich in historic atmosphere. The countryside en route to the captial is intensely cultivated. Modest, well-kept homes are in abundance. Gainesville, prosperous agricultural center and location of the State university, was one city visited along the way to Tallahassee. Student drinking activities at one time created a small liquor market and attendant disorders there, but the exercise of stern disciplinary measures by university authorities has apparently made that form of undergraduate relaxation unpopular and hazardous. The sheriff at Gainesville, apparently a most capable enforcement officer, advised that fraternity dances, proms, and major football games were at one time source of liquor disorders, but that such events during the past year were singularly free from the same.

Tallahassee, State capital, drowsy rural center, and many miles removed from temptations of gay coastal resorts, reflects the stern law-enforcement tendencies of persons native of that part of Florida. Law violations there comprise chiefly minor assaults, petty thievery, and moonshine-liquor transgressions.

The old Spanish trail leads from Tallahassee through Quincy, Marianna, and De Funiak Springs to Pensacola, along a countryside barren of anything but pine forests, a few large sawmills, and miserable, unpainted, neglected habitations. Pine forests, chief natural resources of the State, provide a livelihood in the lumber, rosin, and turpentine industries. People encountered along the highway reflect in their faces the utter desolations of the countryside. Life in that part of Florida is anything but gay.

Liquor violations there are numerous, but involve mainly manufacture and distribution of a cheap moonshine product in small quantities.

Conditions in Pensacola are not encouraging. The naval air station, with its large personnel, creates a market in the city itself for liquor. A prostitution district also flourishes there, almost within the shadow of the local police station. Prohibition headquarters for the northern district are located in the city but function over a large area (from Pensacola to Tallahassee) with a numerically inadequate personnel and, without cooperation from local police, are ineffective.

STATE PROHIBITION LEGISLATION

Local option prevailed in Florida until enactment in 1918 of the State prohibition law. Prior to 1913 temperance legislation had not fared well in the legislature, where liquor interests appeared to have sufficient strength to thwart serious efforts to curb the traffic in intoxicants. In 1913, however, two important laws were squeezed through the latter body by dry adherents, which were, namely, the "antishipping" and "blind-tiger search and seizure" acts.

Statutes concerning the liquor traffic have been enacted by Florida Legislatures since 1901, for use in counties with local prohibition ordinances. One of such enactments, passed in 1901, authorized sheriffs, constables, and police officers, in their respective jurisdictions, to enter any building, booth, tent, or other place, or part thereof, with or without warrant, in which they had good cause to suspect that spiritous, vinous, or malt liquors were kept for sale contrary to law. (Acts 1901, ch. 4932.) Another of such enact

ments prohibited the giving away of liquor within 1 mile of polling booths on election days. (Acts 1903, ch. 5190.) Still another forbade the sale, etc., of liquor to any person, after having been given written notice by husband, wife, father or mother, sister, brother, child, or nearest relative that such person was a habitual drunkard, etc. (Act. 1907, ch. 5689.)

Florida, too, has had an Indian liquor law since 1905, which prohibits sale, giving away, disposition, exchange, or barter of malt, spirituous, or vinous liquors of any kind whatsoever, or any essence, bitters, preparation, compound, composition, or any article whatever, under any name, label, or brand, which produces intoxication, to any Indian (Seminole) of half or quarter breed, etc. (Acts 1905, ch. 5443.)

In 1915 the drys marshaled sufficient numbers to effect passage of the so-called "Davis Act," which prohibited treating, drinking in saloons, free lunches, screens, blinds, tables and chairs, and also compelled closing of saloons from 6 o'clock in the evening to 7 o'clock in the morning.

Still another Florida statute prohibited advertisements relative to manufacture, sale, maintenance for sale, or other disposition of intoxicating liquors within the State; in street cars, railroad trains, or other vehicles of transportation; in public places or resorts, on billboards, posters, circulars, price lists, periodicals, or otherwise. (Acts 1917, ch. 7286.)

Prior to the enactment of the State law the temperance cause in Florida had reached the point where all but two counties had local antiliquor ordinances. When the State amendment was submitted to a vote of the people majorities were returned in its favor from every county.

In 1923 the legislature enacted further prohibitory measures which served to strengthen the existing law. Such enactments included a stringent search and seizure act, a law providing heavy fines and penalties for drunken driving, another measure making persons who cause death under the latter circumstances guilty of manslaughter, and still another making death resulting from sale of poisoned liquor murder.

STATE PROHIBITION ACT

The above law defines liquor as follows:

All drinks, beverages, or alcoholic liquor, for beverage purposes, containing one-half of 1 per cent of alcohol or more, by volume, at 60° F., and all intoxicants and beverages, whether spirituous, vinous, or malt. (Acts 1918, ch. 7736, par. 7.)

In prohibiting manufacture, sale, barter, transportation, etc., it covers a broad field in defining possible violators as "any person, association of persons or corporation, or any agent or employee of any person, association, or corporation, etc." (Par. 1.)

It also forbids sale, giving away, or other disposition of Jamaica ginger, except as authorized by regulations. (Par. 2.)

"Possession, custody, or control" in any manner of liquors, without specific authority under the law, is likewise prohibited. (Par. 3.) The Florida Supreme Court has held that the above provision was

not superseded by the national prohibition act. (Carroll v. Merritt, 109 So. West. 630.) It has also held further that an allegation that a defendant in any prosecution under the State law had intoxicating liquor in his possession places the burden upon the latter to proye that such possession was lawful under statutory exceptions. (Wood v. Whittaker, 81 Fla. 653; Reynolds v. State, 11 So. West. 285.) The court defined possession in the latter decision as "personal charge. exercise of ownership, management, or control." It stated also "that though actual manucaption or presence of liquor may not always be necessary, a conscious and substantive possession must be evident."

Paragraph 15 of the law decrees that all liquor and personal property, including autos, motor trucks, wagons, buggies, boats, vessels, and other water craft, as well as all aircraft, used to violate the law or to facilitate violations of the same are without property rights and forfeitable by the State. But sale of an automobile used for unlawful transportation of liquor without knowledge of the owner is held invalid by the Florida Supreme Court, unless such innocent owner is given due notice of the imminence of such sale (Lippman v. State, 72 Fla. 428), and evidence in proceedings for forfeiture of property so utilized must, according to another ruling by the same body, show beyond a reasonable doubt that the owner thereof knew the use to which the property in question was being devoted (Hall v. Moran, 81 Fla. 706, 89 So. 104; Armstrong v. State, 85 Fla. 452, 96 So. 399).

Penalties available under the act are severe against second offenders, such subsequent transgression being made a felony punishable by fine of not more than $3,000 or sentence to the State penitentiary for not more than three years, or both. First offenses are made misdemeanors and carry fines that are restricted to $500, or jail sentences up to six months, or both. (Par. 18.) State courts have held that a violator may be convicted as a second offender for unlawful possession, though the former conviction was for unlawful manufacture (Reynolds v. State, 111 So. 285), and that the prior conviction must be alleged and proven in the prosecution of a second offender (State v. Mavo, 88 Fla. 96, 101 So. 228).

State officers, such as prosecutors, sheriffs, and constables, are held by the above law to strict accountability for enforcement thereof, which provides for their suspension from office in the event of dereliction in that respect. (Par. 21.)

Search warrants under a subsequent act are not difficult of procurement. Any sheriff, deputy sheriff, constable, or other police officer, either of the State or any municipality, may secure such a warrant upon making an affidavit before the justice of the peace that he" has reason to believe and does believe" that a person in the place. to be examined is engaged in the liquor traffic. Such affidavit must contain a brief statement of the facts upon which such belief is based. (Acts 1921, ch. 8471, par. 1.)

The law with respect to search and seizure of vehicles engaged in unlawful transportation of contraband, as set forth by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Carroll v. United States (267 U. S. 132), is made applicable to the same matters, under Florida law, in the acts of 1927 (ch. 12, 257, par. 1).