Evening Star Newspaper, May 4, 1929, Page 29

G i THE EVENTSA ETAR. WASHISGTON, D. C. SATURDAY. WAY 4 1020. ; 29 ADVERTISEMENT. ADVERTISEMENT. ADVERTISEMENT. ADVERTISEMENT. o T — & We Need Laws We Can Respect WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST PresmenT -HoOVER’s ADDRESS on law enforcement at the Associated Press luncheon in New York was a shot in the air — a blank cartridge dis- 'charged against a blank wall. Everybody knows that the laws ought to be enforced. Everybody knows that the President ought to enforce the laws as far as comes within the obli- gation of his office. Everybody knows that the laws ought to be re- spected; just as everybody knows that women ought to be respected, and that women are re- spected by every decent man. But occasionally there is a woman who is not respected, who is not respectable, who does not respect herself, and whom no one in his heart can respect, no matter what outward observance of respect he may render. And so, occasionally, there are laws which cannot be respected no matter how they are ob- served by good citizens. ‘And there are lawmakers who cannot be re- spected—such, for instance, as gentlemen who impose dry laws upon the land and carry whiskey flasks in their hip pockets. ; L4 . . RESPECT FOR LAW is a good thing when the laws and lawmakers are worthy of respect. But if the American people had had respect for all laws, good or bad, there would have been no Boston Tea Party to protest against the inva- sion of the rights and liberties of our people; no Declaration of Independence to declare liberty and equality as the inalienable rights of man; no United States of America to establish liberty and equality as the foundation stones of republican government; and in that sad case, no President Hoover, but only a certain Herbert Hoover, emi- nent engineer, and a loyal and law-respecting subject of His Majesty King George V. Of course, there should be respect for law in the abstract, but first there should be laws which deserve respect. 1t is better to respect the fundamental Ameri- can principles of liberty, equality and justice than it is to respect laws which infringe upon these inalienable rights of man. Of course, there should be respect for the law- makers; but how can lawmakers be respected who first take a drink and then pass a law imposing five years penal servitude and $10,000 fine upon any citizen who takes a drink, and then go back and take another drink out of a bottle of whiskey which they have smuggled through the customs under their privilege as Congressmen? Of course, law-enforcement machinery should be respected; but how can it be respected when the head of the machine tells the law-enforce- ment officers that the recent liquor law must not be enforced against all the community, but only against part of the community—must not be en- forced in all cases, but only in some cases—and that the discretion for its enforcement lies in the hands of the law-enforcing officers? How wide open this decision leaves the door to blackmail and bribery and corruption, when corruption is already rotting the social and politi- cal fabric of the NATION! How this decision shatters the foundation stones of the RepuBLIC! The cornerstone of liberty has already been reduced to dust. And now another cornerstone—Equality be- fore the Law—is crumbling before our eyes. President Hoover says in the course of his speech at the Associated Press luncheon: “We have reason to pride ourselves on our insti- tutions and the high moral instincts of the great majority of our people.” Then later on the President complains of— ; “The possibility that respect for law as l{aw is fading from the sensibilities of our people. - Ed - THERE IS NOTHING THE MATTER WITH THE INSTITU- TIONS WE HAVE—or, rather, used to have. They embody the basic principles of liberty, equality and equity upon which rest the peace and happi- ness of mankind. & We “pride ourselves upon our institutions,” as the President truly says. There is nothing the matter with them if we can only preserve them. There is nothing the matter with our people. They are a great people and a good people, with “high moral instincts,” as President Hoover de- scribes them. If, therefore, there-is, as Presidgnt Hoover fears, “the possibility that respect for law as law is fading from the sensibilities of our people,” then there must inevitably be something the mat- ter with the law. If there is no sufficient respect for law when our institutions are sound and our people are good, then the inescapable conclusion is that our laws must be bad. - If there is “the possibility that respect for law as law is fading from the sensibilities” of our highly moral people, then it must be that the laws, or a considerable-portion of them, are un- worthy of respect by a highly moral people. That is the unavoidable conclusion, and that conclusion makes the character of our laws the crucial question for the American people to con- sider. - - - PresmeNT HOOVER's SPEECH is a shot in the air— a blank cartridge fired at a blank target—because: it avoids the crucial question of the cause of law infraction and concerns itself only with the su- perficials of law enforcement and of penalties for law infraction. President Hoover forgets the old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and that if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH TEN POUNDS OF PENALTIES WHICH DO NOT CURE. President Hoover says: “We have two immediate problems before us in government, to investigate our existing agencies of enforcement and to reorganize our system of enforcement.” He overlooks entirely the crucial question of reforming our LAws and returning in our law construction and law enforcement to the funda- mental American principles of liberty, equality and essential equity. Surely, there is something the matter with the law when the lawmakers themselves break it as ;oon as it is made. Surely, there is something the matter with the law when the law enforcement officers may decide ‘n their discretion to whom it shall apply. Surely, there is something the matter with the law when a Cossack crew of enforcement officers violate all popular rights and liberties and break into a man’s house on a warrant obtained on per- jured testimony, and beat him into insensibility, and shoot his wife to death as she sits at a tele- phone trying to get help for her husband. Ed - L PresmENT Hoover compramns of the small per- centage of conviction of criminals under existing laws, and asks for severer penalties, apparently unconscious of the well-known fact that severe penalties, out of harmony with the sentiment of a community, always result in fewer convictions and greater encouragement of crime; because no criminal is deterred by a law if he is not afraid of conviction under the law, President Hoover recognizes “the vast sums that are poured into the hands of the criminal classes by the patronage of illicit liquor by other- wise responstble citizens.” But he does not seem to realize that these vast sums have financed the underworld, and are chief- ly to blame for the wide extension of crime and the effective organization of the criminal classes in all lines of criminal endeavor. How great that extension of crime and that organization of criminal classes are can best be told in the President’s own words when he says: “Twenty times as many people in proportion to population are lawlessly killed in the United States as in Great Britain.” ““At least fifty times as many robberies in pro- portion to population are committed in the United States as in Great Britain, and three times as many burglaries.” “Life and property are relatively more unsafe than in any other civilized country in the world.” In spite of all this, the President apologizes for the contaminating conditions under prohibition and declares that “It is only a section of the in- vasion of lawlessness.” - - - Can 1t BE: that the Jones law is in accord with the President’s idea of proper legislative procedure —the Jones law, which is widely regarded as the most menacing piece of repressive legislation that has stained the statute books of this republic since the Alien and Sedition laws under John Adams, which permanently put the Federalist party out of power and installed the Democratic-Repub- lican party under Jefferson to preserve the rights and liberties of American citizens? The Jones act calls for more vigorous and more vindictive enforcement of the sumptuayy laws. The Jones act increases the penalties until the citizen who commits what can only be regarded as a misdemeanor is punished for a high crime. The Jones act adds persecution to prohibition, and in our principles of government substitutes fanaticism for freedom. The Jones act destroys the American ideals of liberty which have been our boast and our boon, and imposes upon our people the European idea of governmental tyranny which our Fathers came to this country to avert and avoid. - . - WiTHAL, the Jones act will defeat its own narrow purposes, and, instead of creating a condition of rigid restriction, will cause— First, fewer convictions because of over-severs penalties; : SEconD, more killings for fear of possible infliction of the severe penalties; TaIRD, more corruption to avoid arrests and possible convictions; i FourtH, higher prices for liquor on account of greater risks, and consequently greater profit in crime; : F1rTH, more violence and more violation of populdr rights; ! SixTH, more conflict between the extremes of bon head drys and bullhead wets, with more distress and dis- comfort to the moderate, temperate, peace-loving, lib~ erty-loving mass of our citizenship; SEVENTH, more cant and hypocrisy in public life, more insincerity among public men, and more disposi- tion on the part of the public to consider the lawmakers of the land a lot of fools and frauds and fanatics. ‘All of which could be avoided if the party in power would remember that it was elected on the Republican ticket, and not on the Prohibition ticket, and that it could best serve its party and its country by restoring the principles of liberty and equality and justice for which our Fathers fought. - - - For BE IT REMEMBERED that our Fathers shed their blood, not for LAws, but for PRINCIPLES. PUBLISHED BY THE TWENTY-EIGHT HEARST NEWSPAPERS—READ BY MORE THAN TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE