Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1932 CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 4 March 1932, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1932 CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES

THE kidnapping of the little son of Colonel and Mrs Lindbergh directs the attention of the civilised world to the prevalence of crime in the United States. A cablegram, sent from New York on 26th February, declared that one million people in the United States are actively engaged in crime, by which they live; but that probably is an estimate which is well below the correct figures. The same message stated that “25,000 gangsters alone have died by the gun in the liquor war,” and it was stated that the United States are more in need of missionaries in such towns as Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit than are India or China. Crime has reached prodigious proportions in ihe United States because it is organ-ised,-und because the police forces which should combat it are ineffectual. Why they are ineffectual is a question for Americans themselves to answer, but a perusal of American journals leads to the opinion that, at least in certain of the great cities of the United States, crime flourishes because of a sinister partnership which exists between criminals and certain unscrupulous members of the police. Let us quote from a book written by Mr 11. B. Chamberlain, who was largely instrumental in bringing the infamous A 1 Capone to justice: Organised crime (in the United States) is to-day a great unmanageable, threatening fact in the lives of our communities. . . We are apparently in a period of corporate paganism. We

are obsessed by desire for self-glorifi-cation. We are the personification of material greed and spiritual emptiness. We seem to have reached a place where politics and commercialism take precedence over patriotism and integrity of purpose. . . . Commercialised vice has vitality and survives, because it is a valuable political adjunct. . . . Magistrates and justices of the peace are incompetent, generally politically controlled, and 100 often have criminal affiliations.

Those opinions are based on the belief that tiie existence of crime and vice in tiie United States is to be attributed largely to the ineffectual machinery which exists for their suppression. Mr Chamberlain, in referring to “organised vice,” says, “From coast to coast, as revealed by the public press, the protection of this form of vice has included an astonishing array of small politicians, bailiffs, jail guards, clerks, and other attaches of the courts, sheriffs’ offices, and others.” But surely, where such a state of things exists, the general public must bear its share of blame. A certain moral turpitude surely exists in the body politic, where there is evidence of the existence of vice and crime organised on a profitable basis in cities and States throughout the country. Crime flourishes in the United States because it pays, just as the bootlegging business flourishes because it is profitable; and they will continue to pay until the great body of honest Americans are determined that they shall be unprofitable. The gangster is protected by the depraved politician, who has his allies in the law courts themselves 1 Until such a state of affairs as that is made impossible by the great body of the people themselves, there is no doubt that crime will continue to flourish in the United States. But the author, whom we have quoted, shows that, on the contrary, the public encourages crime. He says, “The bootlegger, the panderer, the fixer, and the racketeer perform services for which there is a demand. One of the great troubles is that many criminals draw profits for services performed for conventionally respectable members of society.” In view of such a national indictment as that the kidnapping of the Lindbergh’s little son seems almost a' small crime. But if it awakens the American public to a determination to make crime unpayable, it will actually do good. Next to the President there is probably no more popular figure in the United States than Colonel Lindbergh, whose remarkable solo flight from the American to the European Continent produced a stupendous effect upon the imagination of the American people. No doubt his small son will be recovered — on the necessary price being paid—but the effect which will be left on people, who live in countries where law and order are upheld, will be that the sooner the Americans make crime unprofitable the sooner will they deserve to be called a great nation. Mr Chamberlain, from whom we have quoted, declares that his fellow-countrymen live in a state of “corporate paganism.” ' Until they remove such a stigma as that, they cannot expect to lead Civilisation, in spite of the greatness of their wealth and numbers.