The Press Tuesday, November 24, 1925. The Criminal's Paradise.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18547, 24 November 1925, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, November 24, 1925. The Criminal's Paradise.

No one in New Zealand is ever quite sure whether America fears her I criminals, seriously resists them, or is secretly proud of them. When we read how she buries them, wc feci convinced that she would not let them go if a Pied Piper policeman arose to lead them all over the border; that she ranks the Bad Man with millionaires, sky-scrapers, and Niagara as part and parcel of her greatness; and that she has mate than a sneaking pride in announcing how many billion dollars he costs her. In any case her crime bill rises with suspicious speed. It was ten billion dollars a year on September 20th, according to the New York " Times," and yesterday, only two months later, it had jumped to sixteen billions according to the cable reporter. At that rate of increase there would be no wealth left in lawful hands in a year or two—unless as the result of the team-play (" pleasure slowly broad- " ening down from the haves to the " have-nots") described by the New York correspondent of London "Truth." Explaining why there is a car in America for every 6>} citizens, this correspondent says that Americans have learnt the art of putting cars to their full economic use. In England and the Dominions the man who steals a car goes to gaol. In the United States last year 275,000 cars were stolen, and 46,788 retained by the borrowers, " the " owner getting the insurance and the " manufacturer an order for a new car, "'without the old car being wasted." On that principle, even at the furious rate of thieving named in the cables yesterday, the economic life of the American people might continue for five or six years yet; and it clearly cannot continue on any other principle unless 50 per cent, of what we read is lies. But if the Bad Man is a myth the insurance companies are combinations of asses, and that is not quite the reputation they have in other parts of the world. The key to the position really is that these crime records, though not lies, arc in part at least propaganda; not propaganda for or against Prohibition, but propaganda against crime. J Instead of trusting to the police only, many of the States have begun advertising campaigns de- j signed to "drive into the common " consciousness a realising sense of the "stupendous extent of crime" in the country. The ." Brooklyn Eagle," for example, will contain full-page advertisements for the next six months, paid for by Brooklyn citizens, containing such statements as that 360 murders are committed in New York for every ten in London; that seven out of the ten murderers in London are hanged while only one dies out of New York's 160; that Chicago commits a murder a day, and .other cities one in every three or four days; that in 1900 murder was at the rate of five per 100,000 of population, and now is ten per 100,000, a hundred per cent, increase; and so on. It is interesting to read that the director of this campaign is of the opinion that an anti-crime crusade " isn't "worth a tinker's damn without Press " support"; but of, course the more the Press is used the more rapidly the figures will grow in a country in which a newspaper cannot make itself heard unless it screams. There is unfortunately no need to make totals seem worse than they are, since we have the fact at the outset that there are 200,000 people in prison in the United States, ns against 10,000 in.Britain, in spite of the enormously abetter chance of escaping arrest in America for a crime of any kind. Not is there any reason to confuse the issue with arguments by Drys or Wets. It is plain to everybody who eonsufers, the nature of most of these crimes, that they are the offences not of drunkenness but of sobriety, and that if Prohibition enters into the question at all it is negatively. In so far as it has reduced drunkenness, it has proved that crime, in all its worst and most frequent manifestations—certainly in the mass—lias very little to do either with alcohol or with cold water, and that it is merely waste time to talk about closing prisons by closing the open bar.

Forestry in New Zealand.

The fact that the Commissioner of State Forests has just completed another .comprehensive tour of; Marlborough and the West Coast, is proof, if any were needed, of the zeal with which the Department of Forests i 3 being administered. The important fact is not so much that Sir Heaton Rhodes himself is zealous, or has followed a zealous predecessor, bat that the zeal of both has been communicated to their officers, and has been responsible during the last three or four years for really remarkable progress. There has, in been orderly and methodical progress ever since 1919, when the Department was first organised. A definite national forest policy has been evolved, aiming, as' forest policies usually do aim, at the management of the forest domain on a sustained yield basis, thereby assuring the Dominion of ample timber supplies; of conservation of water supplies, reaffoj? station of denuded forest lands,, and dedication of all national forest resources as State forests. The administrative personnel pi the Department now consists of its able and energetic Director, five conservators, a milling expert, an engineer in forest products, a grazing specialist, a surveyor, sawyers, forest guards, and. a clerical staff. This service is responsible for the control and ■ administration of some eleven thousand square miles of State forests snd forest reserves, and anticipates soon having another four thousand square miles added to its field of operations. The whole Dominion is divided into seven fprest 1 conservation areas, each with its various officials responsible for its safety and management, and all the varied activities that economic forestry implies, and all under the general control of the Director. Mature timber is

now sold competitively in open market, and in the last five years this policy has increased timber revenues 1000 per cent. Land under forest has been classified into forest and agricultural land —it is a maxim of forestry that afforestation begins where economic agriculture leaves off—with a view to releasing land suitable for settlement. Other activities are forest extension, control of logging 1 work, issuing of "razing and mill-site leases, splitting permits, opossum trapping control, collection of timber industry statistics, the policing and patrol of State forests. And what comes home more immediately to the average man's business and bosom is that the Service cooperates with other agencies in 'conserving native bird-life, and this not solely on humanitarian grounds, but because it realises their immense importance in forest conservation; and it also encourages, under reasonable supervision, the fnll recreational use of the forests by "campers, tourists, "anglers, stalkers, and all forest- " lovers.'' One of the most obvious dangers to forest is Tire. Loss by fire before the constitution of the present "Forest Authority in 1920 was anywhere between 40 and 150 square miles a year. The menace is now under control, and in the exceptionally dry season 1923-24, only 33 fires were reported. These affected no more than 45 acres, and the monetary loss, some £290, was minimised by prompt salvage cutting. This wonderful advance was the result of hard and systematic work. For there are now regular patrols in danger areas, honorary as well as salaried forest rangers, co-operative auxiliary patrols by sawmill operators, tire look-out stations, fire breaks, and tracks cut at suitable intervals for control and isolation, and other similar devices. Much forestry research has been and is being carried out by Dr. Cockayne, and by expert botanists from Canterbury and Auckland University Colleges, and the results will soon be published. A national forest stocktaking, begun in 1921, is now completed. It shows that the Dominion has nearly 39,000,000,000 superficial feet of soft woods suitable for milling, and some 23,000,000,000 of hardwoods; .that the total forest area is 12,593,000 acres, of which the State Service controls 59 per cent.; that much of this merchantable timber is in out-of-the-way corners; and it shows also the intimate relation that exists be-., tween forestry in the narrower sense, agricultural settlement, and water control. All these facts are gathered from Circular 22, one of the many valuable pamphlets issued by the Service, which gives a complete history of its activities and achievements up to date, and contains among other matters of great interest a note on the distribution of leading types, a three-page detailed description of our principal forest trees, and a map, unluckily without latitude and longitude lines, and very bare of names, indicating forest distribution.

An Interesting Licensing Scheme.

The decision of the electors of Ohinemuri in favour of the. restoration of licenses may turn out to be the beginning of a new and promising experiment in the regulation of the sale of alcoholic liquor. If the electorate had voted for restoration a decade ago, the owners of the premises which were formerly licensed houses "wonld probably have applied for licenses, and the successful applicants would have carried on business without more ado. New ideas are current to-day, however, and it is significant that the chairman < of the National Council of the Licensed ■ Trade has propounded a scheme which] has some resemblance to the plan of " disinterested management" which has been introduced in Great Britain. He proposes that the persons directly interested in the granting of licenses shall pool their interests, and that the hotels of the electorate shall be owned and managed by a company -whose dividends and reserves will be limited, any excess profits being devoted to pnblic uses in the electorate. Full particulars of the constitution of this company are given in a statement by Mr Bankart which we print in this issue. No method of satisfying the public demand for alcoholic liquor can appear other than abominable to the Prohibitionists, but most reasonable people ■will agree that the Ohinemuri scheme is distinctly attractive, and one which is deserving of a .thorough trial pending any general revision of the whole system of licensing which Parliament may decide upon. The persons who possess preferential rights in respect of the new licenses which are to be granted are said to be in favour of Mr Bankart's scheme, and future developments will be watched with interest everywhere. Management by a company will make for efficiency, and there will be every incentive to the company to conduct the hotels in a manner which will be approved by the public. The main incentive will be the desire of the people of the electorate that the operation of their decree that licenses be restored shall be creditable to themselves. They may be reckoned upon to watch closely the effect of the change, and this will be made easier for them if it is decided, as Mr Bankart proposes, that the Board of Directors should include representatives of the general public.