Evening Star Newspaper, May 31, 1931, Page 72

v of New York was not supported by public opin- jon. ' Probably the same situation existed in most other large centers of populaticn. A Jaw that is not supported by public opinion is not a law. This is not just an opinion of mine, but an authoritative legal conclusion. A law of this sort is unenforceable by methods which can be tolerated among a free people. And all unenforceable laws are sources of cor- ruption. One of these grand juries befcre whom my friend appeared asked the policeman who made the arrest in & given case: “You and a brother officer arrested this man for selling Mquor on Sunday?” * “Yes, and we tasted the whisky and had it analyzed, and here is the chemical analysis.” “That saloon was on a corner?” “Yes,” “There are four corners where these streets eross?” “And how many other saloons are there, if any, on the three other eorners?” “Three saloons.” “And you arrested the bartender in only one saloon?” “Wes.” “Why didn’t you arrest the three others?” The truthful answer would have been: *“Be- cause they paid up.” And the grand jury failed to indict. ‘The policeman was merely carrying out orders according to custom. He was to blame only in & minor way. I do not recall the number of licensed saloons in New York City at that time, but there were, roughly, 10,080. The custom was for each pre- cinct to make two arrests each Sunday, so that when a cry was set up that the Sunday law was being flouted the captains in command of pre- cincts-eould point to these arrests—two to each precinct. It did not matter that the convic- tions averaged less than three to a thousand. That was not the fault of the commander of the precinct, it was the fault of the juries! HE truth was that it was not the fault of any one in particular. It was the fault of a system that wrote and kept these un- enforceable statutes on the books of New York and other States, thtis making it easy for cor- rupt members of the police to wax rich by permitting saloon keepers to satisfy the de- mands of the people, which were unlawful and yet not unlawful. Here let me observe, for the information of those unacquainted with the police, that they are probably just as honest a group as are others of similar background in private life. ‘We could not stop the old salcon racket, be- cause public opinion would not support the authorities in their efforts to enforce Sunday closing. And public opinion had a very defi- nite and decisive method of expressing its opinion—through the action of its juries. But the vice racket, and the gambling racket, we could and did stop. In these matters the public conscience was with us because it was opposed to gambling and vice. The average man—and, after all, it is what he wants that a State must eventually give if it is to survive— is opposed to vice and gambling. When we had the saloon the proprietors of these places annually paid the State of New York $26,000,000 for licenses. Millions more were paid to the Federal Government every year. But those millions that used to lighten the burdens of taxpayers, helping them to main- tain their police forces and other agencies of government, now go into the pockets of beer barons and heads of whisky rings and their political alljes. Nowhere have the evil effects been more marked than in the Republican- controlled City of Chicago. New York City, normally Democratic, has not had the over- Jords of the underworld actually ruling the eity, as has seemed to be the case, on occasions at Jeast, in Chicago. But a stronger hold must be taken of conditions in this metropolis and in other communities where the practices born of prohibition are slowly sapping the body poli- tie, if they do not wish the fate of Chicago to are honest and trying to enforce the law, when they have betrayed them; or when civilians, either members of the rings or law conducted a lawful business. lawbreakers, nor were their patrons. the number of speakeasies is estimated to three-quarters of a million, their patrons are said to be more numerous than the frequenters of saloons, and all, owners and patrons, are law- breakers. These are the figures of the Wickersham Com- mission, officially known as the National Com- mission on Law Observance and Enforcement. Let me quote from an article by James J. For- THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. €, MAY" 31, 108%, ~ HIS fertile field for graft has produced a crop of murderous gangsters that challenge our free institutions. If this kind of business is not stopped it will grow. No business man will be safe from the levy of tribute. One of the greatest policemen I have ever known, who rose from the ranks and knows every twist and turn of a great law enforcement agency, who is as honest as the day is long, said to me recently: “The police cannot cope with the beer gangs and rum-runners, even if they tried to. It is only a question of time when the murderous assaults of the bootleggers will eall for the declaration of martial law in many of our large cities.” Let us examine the personne! of this great racket. The flotsam and jetsam of the underworld has been washed into it. The racketeer in the great racket is the “cadet” and the “light house™ of a higher grade, a former ward heeler. Occasionally type, for their ranks the fringes of society recent noted libel suit a detective of reputation was engaged by the plain- tiff, a newspaper of intermational repute, to SSEB FE§§> “He was indignant. He stood upon his rights as a free- borm American citizen.” to the courts in their clients’ car and with a handful of Liberty bonds or $1.000 bills put up security for the bootleggers. It is a Great Racket.” Let us quote a paragraph of House Docu- ment 722, of the third session of the Seventy- first Congress, the report of the “National Com- mission on Law Observance and Enforcement,” etc. “As to oorruption, it is sufficient to refer to the reported decisions of the courts during the last decade in all parts of the country, which reveal a succession of prosecutions for conspiracies, sometimes involving the police, the prosecuting and administrative organiza- tions of whole communities; to the flagrant corruption disclosed in connection with diver- sions of industrial alcohol and uniawful produc- tion of beer; to the record of Federal prohi- bition administration, according to which cases of corruption have been continuous and cor- ruption has appeared in services which in the past had been above suspicion; to the records of State police organisations; to the revelations as to police corruption in every type of munici- pality, large and small, throughout the decade; to the conditions as to prosecution revealed in surveys of criminal justice in many parts of the lJand; to the evidence of connection between corrupt local politics and gangs and the or- ganized unikawful liquor traffic, and of sys- tematic collection of tribute from the traffic for corrupt political purposes, There have been others eras of corruption. Indeed, such eras are likely to follow wars. Also there was much corruption in eonnection with the regulation of the liquor traffic before prohibition. But the present regime of corruption in connection with the liquor traffic is operating in a new and larger field and is more extensive.” HIS indictment was drafted by the com- missioners and concurred in by all. Con- cerning the devastating effects of prohibi- tion on the law enforcement agencies of the country they were unanimous. They stressed that the court records “reveal a succession of tive organizations of whole communities”; and “police corruption in every type of municipality, large and small.” Since the advent of prohibition many police- men think more of getting the bootleggers’ tribute than of detecting crime, or, more portant still, preventing crime. This is a ation not commonly understood, and one is full of menace. For the power have to profit like parasites off this debauching the very men we depend on for maintenance of law and order, the protection of life and property. ‘The graft from this one source alone is prob- ably many times greater than the sum total Lines toa Practical Man. By Anderson M. Scruggs. Y ou who have tossed the sun aside and quenched The rain bow s the darkness of yowr mind, W hose ears are deaf to winds, whose thoughts are clenched Like rivets to the turmoil and the grid— : You cannot shut yowr heart forevermore "4 gainst the siege of lawrel from a halls 'A sparrow's note will batter down your door In that last hour when all bué thought grows still, Then shall the llac’s breath come back o hover. Over the deepening twilight in yowr brobn, The moon return like a rejecied loven, : The creatures of the heorl your, : Shall find a tongue, and from the dorkering aby Fotgotien siars will siab you lke & cugh from all sorts of rackets in the days before the Volstead law. It is not my intention in this article to con- sider the question of how temperance ought to be achieved or what should be done about the present prohibition laws. The aim here is to limit the consideration of this matter to the criminal side of it, In this respect we must al- ways remember that these prohibition laws are sumptuary laws. They are laws that govern our manners and customs, about which opinions vary. The public generally puts them in quite & different category from the laws against pil- lage, robbery, burglary, etc. Yet the efforts to enforce these sumptuary laws increase pillage, robbery and burglary, and breed great criminal professional organizations. What should be done about it all? There is no royal road that I know of which is smooth to travel on and Jeads to a happy solution. It is not so simple as that. Not much improve- ment can be hoped for in the liquor traffic un- less the laws are in accord with the opinions of a large majority of the people whose man- ners and customs they govern. This being so, either public opinion must support the present laws or the laws must be amended so as to bring them into harmony with public opinion. Then, with honest city officials, our troubles along these lines would be mostly over. The “Great Racket” would be past history. Raising Huckleberries. NE fruit that can be grown with success in the home gardener’s back yard, but which is almost entirely neglected, is the huckleberry. This fruit, one of the most difficult to market, has failed to attain the place to which it is entitled in the menu of the average family. Huckleberry pie and huckleberry pancakes are dishes fit to be set before a king, vet they are too little known to the average home. Because of its tendency to soften beneath the weight of the upper berries in an ordinary basket the huckleberry must be sold very quickly after being picked. This limits the distance to which it may be shipped, and as it is not native to many parts of the country, large areas are deprived of the delicious flavor. The bushes are natural to an acid soil and because much of the land in the average yard is treated to copious applications of lime, the soil is not fitted to the growing of huckleberries. This can be remedied, however, by working up the soil around a huckleberry bush with appli- cations of ammonia sulphate and peat moss. These will provide the acid necessary and con- serve the moisture, which is also vital to the development of full, round, luscious berries. Two or three bushes, when they attain their full size, will provide enough berries for an average family and the graceful branches will add beauty to the yard after the bearing has ceased. Honey Standards High. ERMANY, despite its efficiency and despite the high standards of its chemists, is off on the wrong foot on one thing at least, the value of diastase in honey, in the opinion of experts of the Department of Agriculture. The function of diastase, an enzyme, is the diges- tion of the starches in honey. The human system, however, can supply all of the starch digestive action necessary without the aid of the diastase and as a result the demand for the enzyme in honey is heid based on a wrong con- ception. Much of the honey produced in the United States would be barred from Germany as adulterated because of low diastase content and yet the honey may be of the highest quality. California honeys, and orange honeys in par- ticular, fall below the German standard. Eng- land, too, has found the same problem in ex- porting honey to Germany, for British honeys, while of high quality, lack the necessary dias- tase content to meet German requirements. Reduce Forest Fire Loss. HE intensive campaign of the Forest Service to impress upon people of the Southern Pine Belt that the huge annual loss through forest fires was a needless waste has borne fruit, until now the loss from fire each year is only about half of what it was prior to the campaign. this section formerly between 50 and 60 t of the forest area was burned over , and this figure is now cut in half. which appeared at first to be un- t, but which has since been realized most cases remedied, is the damage done forests of burned-over land by roaming 533%§§§§§§§= Citrus Fruit Needs Market. AILBMM!«MMMW that conditions will not improve. The need for a foreign outlet for the rapidly increasing