SHANGHAI, To the Editor of the "Nortu-Cama Dairy News."
Siz,—It is well known to the Police that the gentlemen who pursue the avocation of armed robbery for a living are not residents of this Settlement, therefore the suggestion to search houses would be so much waste of time. Five hundred houses would only be one small block out of hundreds more, and to search more and do it effectively would take a very large number of men, far more than would be likely to volunteer.
There is one well-known way of improving the efficiency of the Police with no additional cost to the ratepayers as a whole, but a slight one to owners of Chinese property. Close all entrances of alleyways with a door or fence: after dark have one entrance only to each block of property. At thix entrance would be a watchman, who would be paid by the residents of that block (the cost would not be ten cents per house per month). In a very little time the people would get used to going in at one gate after dark, and the watchman would know every resident. When a robbery occurred and the alarm was given, the robbers would have to keep to the streets, and would so much more easily be captured, as we should have at least one-third more police in our streets.
I know of no other place in the world where private property patrolled by the Police es it is here. When a permit is granted for the building of " block of native houses, it usually states so many houses and gate houses. Now let us have the gates under the gate houses, and closed after dark, and the Police where they should be, patrolling the roads, and T think Original f
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.