CRIME AND DRUNKENNESS
Promises were made by the reformers that with the advent of
Prohibition the country would witness a great lessening of crime and
drunkenness. Our prisons were to be almost emptied. Unemployment would
be practically unheard of; and the health of the people would be
infinitely better.
Never has the country suffered more from strikes than during that
period between 1920 and the present time. Labor is still restless, for
all the sanctimonious predictions of the Anti-Saloon League. We see,
then, that law and order do not come when we harness a people’s will.
Would that they did! Life would be simple then. People are bound to
burst their bonds and fetters now and then. The spurt of the geyser
goes on, no matter how we seek to suppress it. Old Faithful performs
every hour in Yellowstone Park; and I suppose that until time is no
more, men will go on shouting about their rights, despite such empty
reforms as Prohibition; will go on holding grievances, demanding a
remedy of wrongs, and generally raising Cain. Obstreperous behavior
is not the result of drunkenness--always. People are humanly fond of
cavorting, even without the aid of a stimulant. And so the strikes go
merrily on, and workingmen who were placid under beer are found to be
thinkers under Volsteadism.
The headlines in our papers continue to be sensational, in these times
that were to be so quiet. Murders still occur, strangely enough;
and hold-ups of the most brazen kind take place everywhere. Diamond
ear-rings are snatched from ladies driving in the Park of an evening,
houses are entered by ruffians who tie up the servants and the master
and mistress and calmly go through the premises, taking what they wish.
It is all very shocking, very terrible; but human nature has a way of
remaining what it is. It was thought that only drunkards committed such
heinous crimes. We find that men of sobriety are equally culpable.
The millennium has not arrived; and our prisons are still densely
populated, much as the reformers may deny the disconcerting fact. One
is shocked at the continuance of outrageous crimes; and if, after three
years of experiment with the abolishment of booze, we still face a wave
of disorder and confusion, there seems little hope of that future of
roses and sweetness and light so glibly prophesied.
Hard times continue to confront us, though the fat pay-envelope to
the wife and children of the workingman was to be a weekly event. An
analysis of official figures shows an increase of 44 per cent in the
arrests for drunkenness in 1921 over 1920, and Stuyvesant Fish has
shown that the largest industrial life insurance company reports an
increase of 50 per cent in deaths due to alcoholism in 1921, the second
“dry” year. The statistical Bulletin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company, April, 1922, contained these words:
“There have been marked increases in the death rates for heart
disease, Bright’s disease and apoplexy in recent months among
the industrial policyholders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company. Small increases in the mortality from these diseases
had been noticed early in November of last year, but the change
attracted little attention and caused little comment. The
possibility that it marked a definite check in the favorable
tendency shown for several years for each of these diseases was
not seriously considered. By December, however, the death rate
had taken a more decided upward turn for each disease. Organic
heart disease registered a rate of 124.9 as compared with 118.4
in November; the apoplexy rate rose from 62.9 to 70.6, and that
for Bright’s disease from 69.1 to 71.9. By January it had become
apparent that for two of these diseases, at least, a definite
upward tendency was in progress. The heart disease rate increased
sharply from the December figure of 124.9 to 137.2, and that for
chronic nephritis went up nearly three points over the December
figure. The apoplexy rate for this one month fell somewhat. In
February the heart disease figure rose even more sharply than for
January (to 153.4), the nephritis rate again increased slightly (to
75.8) and that for apoplexy returned to approximately the December
level. By March the rate for organic heart disease had reached
168.2 per 100,000, one of the highest figures ever recorded in any
one month among Metropolitan industrial policyholders. The March
rates for chronic nephritis (87.5) and for apoplexy (75.8) are
both the highest registered for those diseases since March, 1920.”
The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, Inc., has collected
statistics to prove that crime has by no means diminished since the
passage of the Volstead Act; and with their kind permission I give a
tabulated list of twenty cities in the United States, which, under
Prohibition, have revealed an increase in arrests for all sorts of
crimes. These are the official figures in each city.
At random I have taken some statistics from various parts of the
country, to show how drunkenness has not disappeared since the passage
of the Eighteenth Amendment. Rather, has it increased. In Baltimore,
Maryland, for instance, the arrests for drunkenness during the period
between January and April, 1922, were over two-thirds as many as for
the entire year of 1921.
April, 1922 354
April, 1921 238
April, 1920 69
January to December, 1921 3,258
January to December, 1920 1,785
In the State of Wyoming, the total number of prisoners in jail on July
1, 1922, was 561. On July 1, 1917, there were but 452.
_CRIME UNDER PROHIBITION IN THIRTY AMERICAN CITIES_
_Drunkenness and_
_Arrests_ _Disorderly_
_Population_ _All Causes_ _Conduct_
_1920_ _1920_ _1921_ _1920_ _1921_
Philadelphia 1,823,779 73,015 83,136 20,443 27,115
Detroit 995,678 43,309 50,676 5,989 6,349
Boston 748,060 58,817 72,161 22,341 31,794
Baltimore 733,826 41,988 54,602 13,443 20,496
Pittsburgh 588,343 36,572 41,820 14,373 16,990
Buffalo 506,775 24,436 32,377 8,491 9,650
San Francisco 506,676 26,672 30,106 2,794 6,005
Milwaukee 457,147 10,545 15,520 2,400 3,481
Cincinnati 401,247 14,175 21,973 2,062 3,106
Minneapolis 380,582 10,608 17,874 2,982 6,051
Portland, Ore. 258,288 18,445 30,856 3,654 4,379
Denver 256,491 12,947 19,649 1,847 3,163
Louisville 234,891 7,857 9,601 1,092 2,361
St. Paul 234,698 5,638 10,077 1,902 4,319
Oakland, Cal. 216,281 3,706 4,497 1,261 2,191
Akron, Ohio 208,435 12,558 10,104 5,228 3,939
Birmingham 178,806 16,786 21,488 2,886 4,612
Richmond 171,667 12,706 15,532 1,563 1,953
New Haven 162,537 7,934 8,465 3,186 3,184
Dallas 158,976 26,058 35,848 1,219 1,338
Hartford 138,036 8,072 7,395 4,057 3,207
Paterson 135,875 4,058 3,809 1,637 1,509
Springfield, Mass. 129,614 3,757 4,574 625 920
Des Moines 126,468 4,465 4,982 1,530 1,598
Trenton 119,289 5,693 5,577 1,550 1,426
Salt Lake City 118,110 7,728 7,505 883 909
Albany 113,344 3,216 4,168 578 900
Cambridge, Mass. 109,694 3,822 4,664 871 1,423
Spokane 104,437 6,478 7,237 933 1,311
Kansas City, Kas. 101,177 4,774 4,129 45 133
---------- ------- ------- ------- -------
Total 10,417,227 516,835 640,402 131,855 185,808
Total in 30 Cities _1920_ _1921_ _Increase_
Violation of Prohibition Laws 9,375 18,976 102.0%
Drunken Autoists 1,513 2,743 81.0%
Thefts and Burglary 24,770 26,888 9.0%
Homicide 1,086 2,124 12.7%
Assaults and Battery 21,147 23,977 13.4%
Drug Addictions, etc. 1,897 2,745 44.6%
Police Department Costs $31,193,639 $34,762,196 11.4%
Judge Cavanagh of Chicago estimated that there were from 7,500 to 8,000
cases of murder and manslaughter in the United States in 1921. But the
Special Commission on Law Enforcement of the American Bar Association,
in its official report made on August 10th, 1922, stated that there
were no less than 9,500 “unlawful homicides” in this country in 1921.
The average per day was twenty-six. In the previous year there were
at least 9,000 such homicides. In the first nine months and a half of
1922 there were 101 “unlawful homicides” in Philadelphia alone, as
compared with the same number during all of 1921. In the same city, the
arrests for violation of the dry law numbered 32,281, for the period
between January and September, 1922. Of these, 25,925 were “drunk and
disorderly.”
In Providence, Rhode Island, drunkenness has increased 85 per cent
since 1919. In Rochester, New York, crimes of violence in 1921 numbered
607, as against 488 in 1917. In the latter year there were 323 arrests
for burglary, while in 1921 there were no less than 502. It has been
reported that the western part of the State has become the victim of a
new crop of young, educated and what are called “polished” crooks.
Sing Sing prison deported no less than sixty prisoners to Auburn in
May, 1922, because of overcrowding.
The warden of Sing Sing, to whom I wrote, asking for figures as to the
inmates received at his prison, very graciously and with unprecedented
promptness sent me the following report, and told me I could make my
own deductions:
Fiscal year ending June 30th, 1917 1071
” ” ” ” ” 1918 1197
” ” ” ” ” 1919 1073
” ” ” ” ” 1920 1490
” ” ” ” ” 1921 1414
” ” ” ” ” 1922 1613
Figures do not lie.
Yet the Prohibitionists insist that conditions are better than ever
before, and I have seen otherwise intelligent citizens take it for
granted that the figures given by a speaker at some uplift meeting were
correct. Few of us go to the trouble of verifying statistics. But the
fact remains that passionate crimes continue, murders of unprecedented
cruelty are committed all the time, and a heaven on earth is, I fear,
remote from us.