THE GLITTER OF DIAMOND

The murder of a noted bandit and racketeer is bound to be a matter of some interest to the "composite reader," When in addition the victim has successively over a seventeen-year period matured felonious little plans as "wagon bouncer," small-time "chiseler," labor terrorizer, robber, murderer, narcotic smuggler, and leader of a "mob" in liquor traffic, he becomes at least deserving of notice in the news. Yesterday showed that if he can acquire a nickname, be twenty-three times arrested in vain, and attain a certain facility in absorbing and dodging lead, he may be judged worthy of even top-column notice in Boston's most conservative paper.

What is the significance of such a state of affairs? The over-zealous moralist will imply with gusto that the public has a genuine esteem for the perpetration of evil, and that the country is at last on its way to perdition. Such a conclusion must be rejected; the prominence given to the fabulous annals of crime admits of a more significant explanation.

Notorious malefactors do not command the attention of the American public because they have done evil, but because they represent values that catch the popular enthusiasm. Wealth has unquestionably been the reward of many such men; and wealth, whether in a Rockefeller, a Ford, or a Capone has gained the respect of the American public. The king pins of the underworld represent other achievements; and when their success is the result of "high-power organization," with a chief in Florida able to execute his will in Chicago, he wins the unthinking approval of the American public as does the broker who controls the market from his country estate, or the president who starts giant turbines two thousand miles away by a touch on a telegraph key. The speeding fire engine, the pursuing police patrol, or the fleeing armored car are alike in pursuing their objects fast, noisily, and "efficiently." After all, aside from aims and standards, the successful criminal represents much that is worthy per se: certainty as to goal and attainment through careful planning; not to mention the acquisition of a competence and a certain Robin-Hood glamor and daring.

It is the failure to dissociate his methods from his aims, to appraise him as a whole and apply to him any standards worthy of the name, that is to be deplored in a post-war period when standards are conspicuous by their absence. And for this dissociation, this tacit distortion of the true state of affairs, the American press must bear much of the blame.