Crime

A certain morning last week brought three connected pieces of news:

Number One. At 2.30 the previous afternoon, Judge Elbert H. Gary of the U. S. Steel Corporation invited a number of distinguished persons to attend a meeting at his office in Manhattan. The guests included Richard Washburn Child, onetime (1921-24) Ambassador to Italy; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Mark O. Prentiss; William E. Knox, President of the American Bankers' Association; William B. Joyce, Chairman of the National Surety Co.; Governor Smith of New York, Assemblyman F. Trubee Davison and others.

They were called to meet because Mr. Child and Mr. Prentiss had a plan to present. Together they had recently made a survey of crime conditions in the U. S. They found that there is more crime in this country than in any other in the world. They thought that something ought to be done about it. Said Mr. Prentiss:

"Crime is organized to perfection and the only way to meet it is for citizens to organize behind officials charged with the duties of imposing punitive measures, and to close up the gaps through which criminals now regain their liberty on technicalities. There is no place in the world where crime is more rampant than it is in the United States. There are more murders and other crimes of violence committed here in a small town like Memphis, Tenn., for instance, than there are in all Turkey, and I've spent a lot of time in Turkey."

The upshot of the meeting was a plan for the formation of a National Crime Commission, to conduct a criminal laboratory, act as an educational bureau and serve between communities as a clearing house of information about effective means for dealing with crime. Governor Smith of New York announced a plan for formation of a crime commission to bring the methods of preventing and punishing crime up to date. But more than a local effort was the aim of the meeting. F. Trubee Davison, son of the late Henry P. Davison (Morgan partner and head of the American Red Cross during the War), was appointed to call another meeting to gather together prominent men from many states in order to start a National Commission. Thus was a movement initiated.

Number Two. The movement on its very first day received an astonishing amount of good and quite unintentional advertising.

It so happened that two Texas cowpunchers, one of them a full-blooded Cherokee Indian from Sweetwater named Ted Court or "Texas," were in Chicago for a rodeo. They fell in with three amiable young Chicagoans, and all five became intoxicated--the Texans most extraordinarily. That being the case, they decided to take an automobile ride. They piled into a light green automobile, drove north along Michigan Avenue, to the point where it merges into Lake Shore Drive. There they ran past the Drake Hotel, one of the most fashionable in Chicago, and turned east on Walton Place along the north side of the hotel. There they stopped and entered the great building evidently for an elite good time.

The five proceeded directly to the main clerical office of the hotel, the Texans swaggering. The lad from Sweetwater faced the affrighted clerks with a revolver in one hand and a sawed-off a shotgun in the other.

"Get up," he ordered some of the clerks, "we're from Texas. Stick up your hands."

They rose. He formed them into ranks. "March,'' he ordered.

He headed them into the controller's office, then into the office of the promotion manager. There he ordered a right face, and they went on into the office of John B. and Tracy Drake. Immensely pleased with himself as a drill master, he marched them back through all the offices to the room from which they had started. "To the rear, MARCH !"

"Texas" was even more pleased, so he had them repeat the maneuver. "To the rear, MARCH!" As they were getting back to their starting point for the second time, the last clerk in the line slammed the office door in his face. "Texas" blasphemed, tried the door, finally fired through it. But the clerks had scattered. Then he broke out through another door and made his way through the corridor to the clerk's office again. One of them was sitting inoffensively at a desk. "Texas" glared at him, then shot him dead.

Meanwhile three others of the five carousers had held up the cashier and swept $10,000 into a little black bag. They started to flee through the now deserted mezzanine. "Texas," however, stopped to call on the house detective. The detective stuck a revolver out of his office door and fired, hitting the Cherokee in the shoulder. Then Texas joined the others in flight. His falling blood incarnadined the marble steps as he ran down. The other cowboy lost his way, ran into the kitchen and, after a little miscellaneous gunplay, was knocked on the head.

In the street, the three Chicago youths entered their car. "Texas," following drunkenly, got into the wrong automobile by mistake. Two policemen dashed up. Dazed, he began to fire. One of them shot him through the heart. Three half-drunken robbers in a light green car sped east along Lake Shore Drive, turned south with the shoreline, then west to Michigan Avenue, then north again past the hotel with a burst of speed, having completely circled the scene of their crime. Lincoln Park policemen on the running boards of commandeered automobiles followed, volleying. Up the "Gold Coast," with pretentious residences on one side, a little strip of lawn and the broad lake on the other, the chase led, thence into Lincoln Park. The bandit car collided with another and was wrecked. Two of the men escaped. The third commandeered a taxi, trampled a woman occupant on the floor, and went wildly on firing at his pursuers until the taxi was wrecked. He then was cornered. And the champion revolver shot of the Park police force shot him dead.

It was a horrible incident, but a wonderful advertisement.

Number Three. A second part of the movement's publicity was not so inadvertent. The same day that the news of these two events became public, an article appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. It was the first of a series by Mr. Child telling of his national crime survey. He opened with a bombardment of facts : The whole of England and Wales in one year had less than 200 cases of homicide and the city of St. Louis, unaided, had more; Phila delphia has more murders than the whole of Canada, etc., etc. One life insurance company found that for every 146 murders in this country 69 indictments are found, 37 convictions are obtained and only 1 person executed. Mr. Child advanced similar statistics for burglaries, robberies, holdups, etc., etc.

Simultaneously the press of the country carried stories to the effect that persons are being murdered in Chicago at the rate of more than 1 a day--227 murders since Jan. 1, 1925.

The anti-crime wave began to rise.