THAT POSTWAR CRIME WAVE
That Postwar Crime Wave AFAVORITE topic for brooding conversation these days is the alleged inevitability of a huge postwar crime wave. To listen to some of these discussions, one finds it...
...Such things do not happen in real life and hardly ever in the world of fiction...
...Millions of our people—perhaps as much as a third of our population —are without proper food, clothing, and housing...
...They think only in terms of the "barbarians and the civilized" the "good guys and bad guys," and "cops and robbers...
...They want no discussion of the causes of war and how to get at them...
...These people will argue eloquently and correctly for these principles on the home front...
...Mr...
...He spoke plainly and to the point about where the danger of a crime wave lies in postwar days—and it wasn't in any hangover thirst for blood that our servicemen might have...
...Sir George Schuster, a typical British Big Business man and member of Parliament, urges that Uncle Sam curb his exports, so as to give Britain a chance...
...If it becomes the rule rather than the exception, this forward-looking segment could make the change-over to peacetime production far less dangerous than it now appears...
...Our guarantee that our veterans won't practice their newly acquired skills when they get back home, if we interpret Warden Lawes correctly, is to worry less about what crimes they might commit against society and pay more attention to the crimes society may commit against them...
...There was, however, an increase in armed robbery, which came, incidentally, during the postwar depression when the widespread "reduction of wages to abnormally low levels and unemployment pressed thousands into crime...
...Americans vs...
...If the United States limits its foreign trade, where will it find markets for its products...
...Many intelligent Americans believe with Warden Lawes that the only real answer to crime is a solution of the fundamental social and economic maladjustments that cause crime-depressions, mass unemployment, insecurity, vast slum areas, and lack of adequate recreational and educational facilities...
...In late months, Charles E. Wilson, the able and far-sighted president of General Electric, has taken his place alongside Kaiser as a spokesman for a new industrial order of full production and abundance...
...Repudiating the old industrialist idea that uncontrolled profit-making is the key to prosperity, Wilson called for a cut-back to the pre-war prices for industrial products while wages remain at wartime levels...
...How utterly nonsensical such views are was recently pointed out by Lewis E. Lawes, famed former warden of Sing Sing prison, in an article in the New York Times Magazine...
...The veterans have had their fill of blood and butchery...
...It needs to be learned by, among others, the American Legion Post of Hood River, Oreg., which has expunged from its county war memorial the names of 16 Americans of Japanese ancestry who are serving with the United States forces overseas...
...But, the comforting fact is that we are less dependent on foreign markets than any other country, with the exception of Russia...
...But when it comes to the biggest crime of them all—war—these same Americans seem to forget entirely that there are basic economic and social causes for mass slaughter...
...To listen to some of these discussions, one finds it difficult to avoid the conclusion that our servicemen are prepared, once they have finished off the enemy, to land...
...This industrial leadership, best typified in the past few years by Henry J. Kaiser, is turning its back on the old narrow concepts of low wages and big profits, the need for a permanent pool of unemployed to keep labor costs down, and other social menaces of scarcity economics on which monopoly-capitalism has fattened...
...No one questions that statement...
...If the business men of our chief ally are "frightened" before the shooting stops, what can we expect after the war is over...
...Warden Lawes has conclusively answered the irresponsible talk of the cocktail lounge psychiatrists...
...fully armed on our own shores for a post-graduate rampage of killing and looting...
...That would be absurd, but it would be equally absurd to exaggerate the importance to Americans of foreign trade...
...The 16 Americans whose names were erased from the" memorial are being good Americans, by fighting for their country...
...Talking of America's postwar prospects recently, Wilson let it be known that the future of our economic welfare will depend to a large extent on the purchasing power of the mass of the people...
...Getting At The Causes WE WERE reminded, while reading the Warden Lawes article to which the above editorial refers, how utterly inconsistent many of us are in the application of tested and proven domestic principles to the foreign situation...
...Within the confines of the United States, our business men have the richest market in the world and it is capable of tremendous expansion...
...One of the nation's foremost students of crime, its causes and treatment, Lawes left no doubt that he had little patience with this hokum about the "killer instinct" supposedly acquired by servicemen...
...Wilson's stand, although courageous and cheering, can hardly be said to disprove Dr...
...In his brilliant study of America's postwar prospects reviewed in the Nov...
...The same thing happened during the early 1930s," Lawes writes...
...If we are to achieve enduring peace after the war, we must find a way to-continue those good relations...
...In the first place, he pointed out, there was no appreciable increase in the homicide rate following the last armistice...
...Industrial Statesmen Needed ANEW and progressive industrial statesmanship seems to be emerging slowly and with great difficulty in America today...
...Myrdal could make use of it as the "exception that proves the rule...
...Sir George suggests that we should "concentrate on raising living standards at home...
...Then, as if anxious to-reveal that their knowledge of history is just as spotty as their knowledge of psychology, they recall the crime wave that swept the nation after the last war...
...So far as the plain people of the various nations are concerned, the answer is "Yes," but the plain people, as a rule, haven't a great deal to say about foreign policies...
...He has something there...
...With a finality that is one of the tragedies of our day, they scream for force and all the other instruments of war as the only guarantee of peace, and thus run away from the basic social, economic, and political dislocations which result in war...
...What is more, if we have a really bad depression, we face a horrible crime wave...
...Inter-Allied Rivalry (From Labor, Publication of the Railroad Brotherhoods...
...Can we do it...
...Louis Post-Dispatch) THE simple fact that Americanism is not served by the persecution of Americans still needs to be learned...
...Americans (From the St...
...On the contrary and to our deep shame, Dr...
...Pointing out that the cost of such a crime wave would be enormous, Lawes offers as the only solution a program guaranteeing full employment, clearance of our slum areas ["the long known breeding places of crime"], and a vastly enlarged program for the development of kindergartens, playgrounds, recreation centers, and schools...
...The members of the Hood River Post of the American Legion who voted for the erasure are being poor Americans, by allowing themselves to be led by prejudice and empty emotionalism into persecuting their fellow-citizens...
...There need be no worry about the "killer instinct" if there are jobs and decent living conditions...
...The bankers, the industrialists, the diplomats, and the militarists look after that...
...It is like calling for more and bigger persons and more and tougher policemen to prevent crime, rather than for the sound program of dealing with the causes that Warden Lawes recommends out of the richness of his experience...
...They will be, as they were after the last war, anxious to forget the whole bloody nightmare...
...In this way, he argued, industrial products will be put in reach of the purchasing power of the workers, creating a steady demand and stable employment...
...Men like Kaiser and Wilson are still lonely exceptions, but the incontestable logic of their position is bound to make converts in the ranks of industry, except among the Bourbon-minded who never learn anything and never forget anything...
...Our business men and politicians should not overlook that important fact...
...27 issue of The Progressive by Sydney Kasper, Gunnar Myrdal, Sweden's famed economist, wrote: "Are the American enterprisers likely to stand up before the country and complain that the critical economic situation compels them to suggest a huge rise in wages in order to create a sufficient basis of purchasing power for production at* a level of full employment...
...If we raised the living standards of this "sub- -merged" segment, our business men would not have to worry very much about foreign markets...
...There has never been a time in the last 5ft years when we exported more than 6 or 7 per cent of our total production...
...And it will happen after this war unless economic security is provided...
...Myr-dal's tragically truthful observation...
...The "killer instinct," these alarmists say with a hollow solemnity, has been brought to the surface and will not soon be sublimated...
...Let no one imagine we are advocating that Americans abandon foreign trade altogether...
...THE WAY Uncle Sam and his Allies have hung together in this global war is probably without parallel in the history of the world...
...We are frightened at what we read about your country's preparations for postwar industry and export," he says...
...That runs into billions every year and, therefore, is not to be disregarded...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 51
