Crime, Rex

It is seldom nowadays that distinguished lawyers are criminal lawyers. The big fees and the prestige result from study and practice of corporation law, estate law, banking law and to a less extent divorce law. Criminal law is a subject left to the unscrupulous shyster, the political heeler, the occasional social reformer or great charlatan or utter cynic. It has been remarkable, therefore, to watch the increasing emphasis which the American Bar Association has felt it should lay, at its distinguished annual conventions, upon the criminal tendencies and condition of the land. It has made laymen wonder whether there is any relation between the lawyers' neglect of criminal practice and the insurgence of Crime itself. Retiring as president of the American Bar Association at last week's meeting in Seattle, was Silas Hardy Strawn, eminent resident of "the crime capital of the U. S.," Chicago. Last winter, when a group of Chicagoans, who were really worried about Chicago's condition, asked Mr. Strawn to preside over a discussion meeting, he irritated many of them by pooh-poohing blandly: "In 36 years in Chicago, 7 have never been held up, robbed or racketeered." Last week Mr. Strawn had changed his tone, perhaps because he did not have to add specifically to Chicago's embarrassment. He made Crime the main burthen of his retiring-president address. He even offered a neat classification of causes for Crime's since-the-War increase, as follows: "1) The increase and development in the means of communication, hard roads and high-powered automobiles, making the 'getaway' easy. "2) The vastly increased wealth of our citizens and especially of the criminal classes, enabling them to buy fast motors and expensive guns. "3) Organized crime which enables the underworld to make liberal contributions to political campaigns and to exert a powerful influence in politics. "4) Delay in the apprehension and speedy punishment of criminals due in part to the leniency and paltering of political judges and in part to our too liberal laws. We do not give enough attention to the selection of our judges and prosecuting attorneys. "5) The apathy and indifference of our best citizens toward their duty as citizens. Those best qualified to serve as jurors seek to avoid the service because of its discomforts or because they dislike to leave their business. "6) Unrestricted traffic in firearms. . . . And Retiring-President Strawn went further. He faced what has been going on around him in Chicago ever since Prohibition. He said: "The crime surveys show that crimes of violence, especially in the urban centres, committed largely by bootleggers and beer runners, have increased to an alarming extent. It is asserted that the existing condition conduces to a growing disregard of all law, especially by our young people, to an extent that is appalling. Frequently we read of policemen and law-enforcing officials being bribed and debauched and of innocent victims being shot down by overzealous officers in their efforts to enforce the Volstead Act. "Many of our representative citizens, who would not think of violating any other law, continuously violate the Volstead Act, or conduce to its violation, by buying contraband liquor from bootleggers, thereby enriching the underworld beyond the dreams of avarice. "We cannot shut our eyes to the patent facts. It is obvious that thus far the efforts of the Government effectively to enforce this law, especially in the urban centres, have not always been highly successful. "Every good citizen, particularly the lawyer, who is sworn to do so, ought to support the Constitution and obey the laws of the land. Either the Constitution should be obeyed or it should be amended, as the people may determine. It must not be nullified. Respect for the Constitution and observance of the law must prevail in this country." Other topics the convention discussed in a minor key, significantly modification of the anti-trust laws to permit oil operators to make trade agreements for the conservation of underground oil. The lawyers believe such legal latitudinarianism wise, "in the public interest." When time came for the election of a president to succeed Silas H. Strawn, the convention might have been expected to pick a great criminal lawyer for the office previously held by William Howard Taft, Elihu Root, John William Davis, Frank Billings Kellogg, Charles Seymour Whitman, Joseph H. Choate, Alton Brooks Parker. But in character they elected another corporation expert. The elect was Gurney E. Newlin, Los Angeles corporation lawyer. Of half a dozen corporations in which he is director the most important is the powerful and growing $95,000,000 Union Oil Co. of California. His good friends on that directorate include Henry Mauris Robinson, president of the Los Angeles First National Bank, co-originator (with Vice President Charles Gates Dawes and Owen D. Young) of the Dawes Plan, and Clarence Dillon of Manhattan. All this done, the Association decided to hold its 1929 convention in Memphis--in October to escape summer's heat.