A BAD NATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 22 May 1925, Page 7

A BAD NATION.

AMERICA’S YEARLY TOLL. It is a most terrible indictment against the United States, but not so terrible, perhaps, as the accusation that the American people are accepting the indictment almost with complacency, and that the average citizen moves no; at all to remedy a situation which is threatening their national existence. The public apathy is said to be witness, ed everywhere—in the jury room, in the lack of respect for law among the young, among the people in their private lives. And it is this, not the lax enforcement of law, we are toid, which explains why America lead s the world in man-killing, in all the crimes of violence; why —and it is horribly significant—the United States Government has had to contract for the builcL ing of 3000 specially designed armoured cars for use in tiio man service., and put one through a. test of its serviceability under actual conditions, with men hired to pose as bandits So, we are told, there is a. melancholy suggestiveness in the widely quoted words of Judge Alfred Talley, of the Court of General Sessions in New York City, on recently inducting into office a new jurist. He said: — “One of the things that you will come to learn is that you have come on the bench of the greatest criminal court in the world, and the oldest coiirt of any kind in the United States at a time when this country is suffering under an indictment which proclaims it to lie the most lawless on earth.

MAGISTRATE IS CRIME WEARY

“You will find tlmt the United States must plead guilty to the indictment. Most of the desperate criminals are mere boys. You will be brok-en-hearted at discovering that the vast majority of defendants are under 19 or 20 years of age. That is going to be your most distressing problem^ The crime-weary Magistrate) Judge Talley, has served for years in General Sessions witnessing the tragedies of lust and malice, or envy and passion, and lie takes up the story in an article in the New York Herald Tribune, in which he states somfe ugly facts and points out some of the cases which bring America before the bar of the world’s opinion. On a Conservative estimate, he tells us, there are no fewer than 10,000 murder cases in a year in America. A recent investigator, he goes on, writes that if the victims of murder in the United States were buried in a single line, 10ft. to a grave, their bodies would cover a trench some 20 miles in length, and if the ratio were preserved for a period of ten years, the trench would extend 200 miles. It is of great significance, points out the eminent New. York jurist, that the .upward trend ;in the American murder record is assuming such proportions that the principal life insurance companies are becoming concerned over it just as.they would be concerned over an epidemic of smallpox or typhoid fever. Judge Talley continues: —

BUSY YEAR FOR MAN-KILLERS. “A recent bulletin of the Metropolitan Life-Insurance Company declared that the homicide rate in America is about 1.2. times as high us it in England, and points out that the year 1.923 was a busy year for man-killers, and that while in 1922 6.3 per 100,000 of' the industrial policy holders in Canada and the United States were slain, this figure was increased in 1923 to 7.3. “Frederick L. Hoffman., Statistician of the Prudential Insurance Company, recently published a very careful and ‘ illuminating homicide record for 1923, in. which he analyses the murders in 28 of our principal cities, and, summarising, says : ‘This table is the most amazing murder record for any civilised country for which data are available. It * indicates a state of affairs so startling and of such significance that no Government, Federal or State, can rightfully ignore the situation. Compared with the beginning of the period;, the murder deathrate has practically doubled in 24 years.” “He points out by way of contrast that in all England and Wales in 1923, with an approximate population of less than half of that of the United States, there occurred 200 deaths from homicide,' as against approximately 10,000 in the United States. This would be, therefore, equivalent to about four deaths per million in England and Wales, as against a rate of 102 per million for 28 cities of the United States. In all Scotland in 1922; among a population of about 5,000,6011 there occurred about 18 deaths from homicide.

AMAZING COMPARISONS “Does anyone arise to deny the assertion that we are the most lawless nation on the face of the earth? Even he who runs may read and understand the figures given below for the tenyear period from 1911 to 1921 in the United States, covering the area for which statistics are available. They show that the- average homicide mortality per 100,000 of our population was 7.2. ! In out next neighbouring provinces of Ontario and Quebec it was 0.5. In England, Scotland, Wales and Australia and South Africa it was 1.9. “This fault, we are told, does not lie with lax enforcement of the law or with lax officials. The great difficulty in the administration of the criminal law in this country is attributable,” writes the jurist, “to two things: The first is the apathetic attitude of the people towards the strict enforcement of the law and the punishment mf the criminal, and the second is the unwillingness of the people themsejve.s to respect and obey the law of the land and to train the children of the country td obedience and respect .for lawful constituted authority.”