TINDER the above heading an article appears in McClure's Magazine
for December which, if the facts cited cannot be shown to be incorrect, is of vital importance to the American people. The article, though signed by Mr. S. S. McClure, is in reality little but a series of extracts from reputable American newspapers giving facts as to the increase of lawlessness in America, and of statistics of crime for the past twenty-three years collected by the Chicago Tribune. Before we analyse this terrible indictment of American civilisation by Americans, we desire to point out that we do so in no unfriendly spirit. Probably the well-known sympathy felt by the Spectator for America and its people would preserve us from such a charge among most thoughtful and patriotic Americans. Still, it may be worth while to put on record that we only draw attention to this dark spot on American life because we are as anxious as any American could be that the greater half of the Anglo-Saxon race shall free itself from evils so terrible. We firmly believe that the progress of the world towards liberty, justice, and good government is bound. up with the fate of the Anglo-Saxon race. But if the larger half of that race, who are trustees for Anglo-Saxon social and political ideals, were to enter on the down- grade, our best hopes for human progress would be blasted. When America realises the duty before her she will, we are convinced, put her house in order. Till she does so, however, the lawlessness of American life must be a matter of deep concern, not only to her own people, but to her friends, in this country,—that is, to the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.
Let us look at the facts as set forth in Mr. McClure's article. The first point he makes is the appallingly rapid increase of lawlessness during the last twenty-two years. At present there are four and a half times as many murders and homicides for each million of people in the United States as there were in 1881. In 1881 there were 1,266 murders and homicides committed in the United States. In 1902, if the murders and homicides had merely increased in the same ratio as the population, there should have been 1,952. As a matter of fact, there were in 1902 8,834 •murders and homicides. Yet 1902 is not the worst year on record during the last twenty-two years. In 1895 there were 10,500 murders and homicides, and in 1896 10,652. It is always difficult to realise the full significance of naked. statistics. To bring home their meaning to men's minds we may quote the words of an American Judge's charge to a jury. The Judge pointed out that the number of murders and homicides in the United States for three years " was one-third larger than the total losses of the British Army in the war in South Africa." The men killed in action in the Boer War numbered 22,000. In the three years taken by the Judge the number of murders and homicides in the United States was 31,395. These figures, it must also be re- membered, cannot be excused on the ground that •law- lessness is incidental to newly settled countries and rough communities on the edges of civilisation. The case of New York is nearly as bad as that of Chicago, though that great and opulent city • of the Middle West, with thirty years of riches and splendour behind it, cannot be regarded as in any true sense a raw community. Again, the statistics of man-slaying in Canada, and we might also Add in Australia and New Zealand, indicate that young countries may be as crimeless as, or even more crimeless than, old-established States. Mr. McClure also shows that it is impossible for the American people to comfort themselves with the thought that the burden of crime under which they now rest is the fault of the European-born population in their midst. Of the 10,356,000 foreign-born men and women, only the 424,000 who hail from Russia come from a country where crime is as prevalent as in America. The other 10,000,000 come from countries no one of which has half as many murders and homicides per million of population as America. And of these nearly 3,000,000 come from the United Kingdom, " where murders and homicides are less than one-tenth as common " as they are in America. So, adds Mr. McClure, " the increase of murders and homicides in the various countries seems to show that foreigners in the United States acquire most of their dis- respect for the law when they come among us."
We cannot attempt to give in detail the mass of evidence from American newspapers collected by Mr. McClure. The following quotation, however, may be made from his summary of the causes which he believes have produced the present condition of lawlessness :— "Is it possible for officials to prevent ordinary crimes who are- selected and elected generally for reasons other than special fitness for their tasks, and frequently for the definite purpose of robbing the people who elect them? Can a body of policemen engaged in blackmail, persecution, and in shielding law-breakers make a community law-abiding? Can a body of policemen engaged in criminal practices prevent others from committing crimes ? Can a board of aldermen who for private gain combine to loot a city govern a city well? We have described time and again the oligarchy which consists of these three classes : 1st. Saloon-keepers, gamblers, and others who engage in businesses that degrade. 2nd. Contractors, capitalists, bankers, and others -who can make money by getting franchises and other property of the community cheaper by bribery than by paying the community. 3rd. Politicians who are willin to seek and accept office with the aid and endorsement of the classes already mentioned. These three classes combine and get control of the party machine. They nominate and elect men who will agree to help them rob the city or state for the benefit of themselves and who will agree also not to enforce the laws in regard to the various businesses that degrade a community. We find under various modifications this criminal oligarchy in control of many communities in the United States. We find representatives of this combination in the United States Senate, among governors of states, state legislators, mayors, aldermen, police officials. We find them among men in business life—captains of industry, bankers, street-railway magnates. In short, wherever franchises or contracts of any kind are to be secured from a community, we find leading citizens in the ring to rob their own neighbours, managers of corporations bribing law-makers, lawyers for pay helping their clients to bribe safely, jurors refusing to render just verdicts. These men— bribers of voters, voters who are bribed, bribers of aldermen and legislators, and aldermen and legislators who are bribed, men who secure control of law-making bodies and have laws passed which enable them to steal from their neighbours, men who have laws non-enforced and break laws regulating saloons, gambling houses, and, in short, all men who pervert and befoul the sources of law—these men we have called Enemies of the Republic. They are worse—they are enemies of the human race. They are destroyers of a people. They are murderers of a civilization."
In other words, it is Mr. McClure's opinion that the terrible increase of life-taking in America is due to the spirit of lawlessness encouraged in the nation by the men who, in order to make private fortunes, bribe, directly or indirectly, the police and the legislative bodies, or ensure; by means of bribery and intimidation, that their creatures shall be chosen for offices of public trust. In our belief, Mr. McClure is right. The whole history of mankind shows that you cannot be virtuous in water-tight com- partments. Just as no man can say to himself: " I will do a corrupt [or immoral, or unworthy] act just once, or only in this department of my life, and in all other cases I will be a good citizen and a good man," so no nation can tolerate corruption or wrongdoing in one portion of the national life and imagine that the evil will go no further. He who pays bribes to obtain some consideration from a public body or a public official, who takes hush-money or receives a secret commission in-order that this or that rich man or company may have his will against the law of the land, is, in truth, a sharer in the iniquity of the murders and homicides which disgrace his country. Such corruption is less sensational, but not in reality less criminal, than It remains for the American people to apply the remedy to this new evil, as so often in the past they have applied remedies to national crimes. The first thing is to awaken the conscience of the nation. We are glad to see that it is the intention of the conductors of McClure's Magazine to unmask, in a coming series of articles, the men who are corrupting the public and private life of the United States. Public opinion is still an immense factor for good in the United States, and, Heaven be praised, the printing press is still free in America. The corrupt millionaire may be able to buy a Municipality, a State Legislature, a Police Commissioner, or a Court of Justice. He may be able to ruin, and so silence, any politician, or even any preacher or College Professor, who dares to oppose his schemes. But even the richest multi-millionaire cannot buy all the printing presses in the United States. When every other opponent is drugged, gagged, or bought, the printing press can still speak. But it will not, of course, be enough merely to expose in the Press those who use their wealth corruptly. The American people must reform their institutions in such a way that they cannot be captured by the tyrants who now use money as in the old days they used armed force. To accomplish this the first thing needful is to strengthen the American Courts of Justice, and to give the Judges something of the weight and authority in public life that they have in England. We do not for a moment suggest that the State Judges are, as a whole, corrupt, for we are well aware that, with very few exceptions, they are men who could no more be bribed than could our own Judges. But as a rule, or at any rate in a vast number of cases, they are not men of sufficient power and standing in the community to do their duty as it ought to be done. The posts they occupy are too poorly paid to attract the best intellects in the country, and human nature being what it is, poorly paid and socially and intellectually insignificant men will not stand up successfully to the forces of wealth and influence. We venture to say that if American Judges had the standing and prestige which belong to our Judges, the rich men (needless to say, only a minority of the wealthy classes in America) who now use their money to corrupt public officials and public bodies would find themselves in jail either for contempt of Court, or for some open breach of a positive law. Rich men dare not openly defy the law in England as they do in America. The actual statute law in America is more than sufficient to put down corruption. It is its adminis- tration that is at fault. We know how difficult, owing to the State system, it will be to give greater weight and authority to the Judicature in the ordinary State Courts of the United States. Till this is done, however, no attempt to purify American life can be really and per- manently successful. Further, it is absolutely necessary that not merely in the cities, but throughout the country, there should be a large, well-paid, and efficient police force, and that this police force should be made to recognise that its duties are quite as much preventative as puni- tive. The American police do not at present realise that it is as much their business to prevent crime taking place as to arrest the criminal after a crime has been committed.
We fear, as we have suggested above, that our endorse- ment of Mr. McClure's article will be represented by interested people as an attack upon America by " un- friendly, supercilious, and hypocritical Englishmen." We must take the risk of this, however, content to feel that if we have done something, however little, to awaken American public opinion on a vital matter, we shall have deserved well of the Republic. We would rather be " howled down " for a season as anti-American than join in a conspiracy of silence on a question which concerns the welfare of the whole Anglo-Saxon world.
LORD KITCHENER'S PLAN.
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