Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE SATURDAY, MAY 9th., 1931. “LAWLESS” U.S.A.

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1931, Page 6

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE SATURDAY, MAY 9th., 1931. “LAWLESS” U.S.A.

¥F all the news cabled from the United States were taken at face value, that country would have to be regarded as a hot-bed of crime and vice. Murders, robberies, easy divorce, gangsters’ feuds, corruption and graft in public administration are reported almost daily, and the impression is given that virtue is almost nonexistent. Tn a country that boasts of its high ideals, and is ever producing up-lift campaigns, it is very strange that so much wrongdoing occurs, and a little reflection aronsps a suspicion that many of the reports are exaggerated, and

that to flesh creep and to cause sensation is a task beloved of many American newspapermen. Life in the United States, on the whole, is as normal and law-abid-ing as in most countries, and considering the size of the republic and the 120 millions of a mixed population, crime there is not so unduly prevalent as the cablegrams infer. Even Hollywood is a most maligned place, according to Miss Amy Castles, the Australian singer, who recently returned from a trip to the States. “One hears in Australia and various parts of the world,” she said, “of the terrible and questionable life they lead there, but Hollywood really is no different from any other place. A few people want publicity, and

do not care how they get it.” That there is some fire for the arge amount of smoke, where lawlessness in U.S.A, is concerned, is confessed by prominent Americans, one, Mr. J. T. Adams, recently writing a book on the subject. He admits that his country is more lawless than Europe, and in seeking the cause he avoids the statement, so popular now, that it is due to Prohibition. That is one of

the causes, he:admits, but he finds the real basis far farther back in American history. That cause is the frontier. Few. outsiders, he says, realise that the frontier in America only ceased officially to exist in 1890. This means that until forty years ago a large and virile portion of the population was fighting nature in conditions which left no time for the niceties of law. Every man defended himself and settled his own quarrels. The community dealt with anti-social individuals by lynch law, and lynch law persisted long after the real need for it had been obviated by the establishment of courts and legal/machinery. Even farther back than that he traces the disregard for British law in colonial times based on resentment against British taxes and tariffs, the evasion of which carried no moral stigma. Another factor, he says, in the American disregard for law—and here is a lesson for all ultra-en-thusiastic social reformers —is the “fool-laws” so .readily made in that “God’s own country.” Mr. Adams points out that forty-eight State legislatures and the Federal Congress are grinding out thousands of laws a year, many of them foolish and many of them incapable of enforcement. It is easy for a band of earnest reformers or cranks to secure the passage of legislation, and difficult to obtain its repeal. The result is open defiance or quiet nullification. An instance of these “fool-laws” is that on travelling in a train from Buffalo to Chicago it is legal to buy cigarettes for the first hour or two, but after crossing the imaginary State line into Ohio it becomes a crime, and an hour or two later, when Indiana is reached, one can again buy them without becoming a criminal. It is important that any avenue for misplaced prejudice against the United States should be dispelled in all British lands, because on Anglo-American amity depends the peace of the world and the prosperity of English-speaking races. There is much about , American policy that Britons do not agree with, but it would be folly to form ideas about the States and its people’s standards of conduct that are erroneous. New Zealand and others often smile when they read in newspapers published outside their own countries “news” / about happenings in these lands, and doubtless travelling Americans often laugh when they read some of the “news” sent abroad from New York or Washington. Nations, like individuals, are not averse from hearing ill of their neighbours, especially if the alleged sinner is apt to claim superiority of standards, but this tendency should be kept in check, if real evil consequences are to be averted.