“LAWLESS CHICAGO.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 5

“LAWLESS CHICAGO.”

TO THE EDITOR. Sik,—-In Thursday's issue, under the above heading, you publish a cablegram chronicling the alleged fate at the hands of a gunman of Chicago's alleged Labour leader, " Big Tim" Murphy. Now that " Big Bill" Thompson has been defeated for the Chicago mayoralty, the crime news is being searched for items calculated to thrill and to add. to what the Rev. J. J. North recently described in Auckland as the colossal vanity of New Zealanders, the feeling of the " unco guidy' so accurately portrayed by Burns. Seemingly, since prohibition, no good thing can come out of the States. By the silly insular criticism of certain New Zealand newspapers the American tourist has even been scared away from these shores. It would probably surprise many in this country who take their views secondhand to learn that a prominent Aucklander now in the United States, has discovered- Chicago to be a city of considerable culture, with advanced views on municipal and social progress, and not the jungle peopled by savage scrappers armed with automatics and machine guns who so many people imagine it to be. " Wonderful Chicago " is what Mr H. R. Mackenzie, who is chairman of the Auckland Harbour Board, declares it to be. Consideration for your space forbids more than a very tiny extract from Mr Mac-. | kenzie's impressions of the premier city of the West. Hero it is: "Chicago prov vides free education for all its young, including the school books, right from the primary schools to the university. AH the different play grounds have instructors' provided free by the city." This in a citv with 100 miles of boulevard along the lake front, and 50 miles of beaches, with grand bathing sheds all free to the public, not to mention numerous parks and golf links, all free, and no charge for games? Even the New Zealand Government, which imagines itself a worldbeater, baulks at free school books, and as for free education, is it not something of a myth in New Zealand?—l am, etc., Fair Plat. Balclutha, July 2. [The homicide death rate in Chicago in 1920 was 13.3 per 100.000. compared with 4.5 in Moscow.—Ed. O.D.T.]