The Failure to Enforce Law
What does it all mean? Are our people losing, not merely their respect for law, but their very sense of what law means? With the city [Chicago] so held in the grasp of criminals that for neither life nor property is there security, the people are becoming aroused to one of the most serious problems that can confront a municipality. Acting Mayor McGann declared that matters had come to such a pass that “to-day crime and the criminal form the greatest question before the people of the nation.” In South Carolina, as we have noted, the safest crime is the crime of taking human life. The conditions are the same in almost every Southern State. Murder and violence are the distinguishing marks of our present-day civilization. We do not enforce the law. We say by statute that murder must be punished by death, and murder is rarely punished by death, or rarely punished in any other way in this State, and in any of the Southern States, except where the murderer is colored, or is poor and without influence. Now, this state of affairs can not last forever. We have grown so accustomed to the failure of justice where human life is taken by violence that we excuse one failure, and another, until it will become a habit, and the strong shall prevail over the weak, and the man who slays his brother shall be regarded as the incarnation of power. The fact that two hundred and twenty-two homicides were committed in South Carolina during the year 1903 has been published. Captain Charles Petty, of Spartanburg, S. C., was asked the other day what in his opinion were the causes leading to such a record. He replied: “Our own citizens were less shocked by the bloody record than those of other States; for we had by degrees got accustomed to homicide. It did not appear to be a phenomenal record, even to our law-abiding, conservative citizens. They understood how it was brought about. It would be well for people outside of the State to learn that this record is only the logical result of many years’ infraction of law.” In Chicago during the past year there were one hundred and eighteen homicides, besides a large number of deadly assaults, in which the victims recovered or partially recovered. In Paris, according to statistics, just completed by the police in that city, only fifteen murders or attempted murders occurred in the same period. In London, three or four times the size of Chicago in population, there were twenty murders. These figures illustrate the situation in Chicago. More than eight times as many murders in Chicago as in Paris! Six times as many as in London! Mr. McClure then brings forward his statistics covering the period from 1881 to 1903 inclusive, showing, among other items, the population of the United States for each year and the number of murders and homicides in the United States for each year. In 1881, with a population of 51,316,000, there were 1,266 murders and homicides. In 1902, with a population of 79,117,000, there were 8,834 murders and homicides. The terrible conclusion from these figures is that “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.” To meet the claim that this enormous increase of crime is due to the foreigners who come to this country in such large numbers, Mr. McClure states that, with the exception of Russia, these immigrants “came from countries no one of which has half as many murders and homicides per million of population as we do.” His conclusion is that “the records of murders and homicides in the various countries seem to show that foreigners in the United States acquire most of their disrespect for law after they come among us.” In looking for “the causes of this appalling increase of crime,” Mr. McClure presents the following view of the situation:— We have described, time and again, the oligarchy which consists of these three classes:—- Saloon-keepers, gamblers, and others who engage in businesses that degrade.
- 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.
- Politicians who are willing to seek and accept office with the aid and indorsement 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 neighbors, managers of corporations bribing lawmakers, 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 lawmaking bodies, and have laws passed which enable them to steal from their neighbors,—men who have laws non-enforced and break laws regulating saloons, gambling houses, and, in short, all men who pervert and befoul the source 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. They constitute a class of criminals very different from ordinary criminals who break laws; these men destroy law. Foreseeing that there will be some, perhaps many, who will not like to look upon such a forbidding picture of present-day conditions, Mr. McClure anticipates their attitude toward his presentation of the facts by saying: “It is easy to generalize, and to turn your back and say, ‘I am an optimist,’ or ‘After all, this is the best country in the world.’ But a man is not necessarily an optimist who, if his house is on fire, refuses to look, and says, ‘I am an optimist; I don’t believe it’s on fire after all.’” We have given considerable space to these extracts, and we believe that the importance of the subject justifies our doing so. When Seventh-day Adventists assert that violence and crime are on the increase, they are contradicted point blank, or it is claimed that the apparent increase is due to the increase of the population, or to more complete and accurate statistics. But here is a consensus of opinion as indicated by the utterances of representative men and newspapers, backed up by carefully collected statistics covering a period of over twenty years, showing that there is undeniably an actual and alarming increase of crime and violence in this country which is all out of proportion to the increase of population, and a well-grounded claim that this state of affairs is due to an organized campaign for corrupting the very sources of law and for debauching the public conscience. The writer of this article does not claim to be setting forth the fulfilment of prophecy concerning the last days, but he is certainly making a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the prophetic description of the condition of things just before the coming of the Lord. “As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” And of the times of Noah it is said: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” The diagnosis of the causes of this increase of violence, as stated in the article from which we have quoted, emphasizes the hopelessness of the situation so far as the ordinary agencies of reform are concerned. Many whose sworn duty it is to uphold law and to enforce obedience to it are in collusion with the professional lawbreakers, “and justice is turned away backward, and righteousness standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and uprightness can not enter.” When we also remember that since the obligation to observe the Sabbath of the fourth commandment has been urged upon the people of this generation, many ministers of the gospel have declared that God’s law has been abolished, we can appreciate more fully how deep-seated is this tendency toward lawlessness. There is5no remedy for the situation as a whole. For individuals there is deliverance through the third angel’s message and the coming of the Lord.