Life — June 19, 1924 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope’ LIF Cranies Dana Gissox, President 98 Madison Aver English Offices, Rolls H HERE are murders in the paper every day Here in New York we have about 330 a year and hye that means a murder rate much below most of the greater cities of this try. We are used to killings, undoubtedly. Why <i then did that Chicago murder & x ‘Shy two sons of rich Jewish Niamilies who killed a young omrade extraordi Every thoughtful. person who read the headlines about it in the paper seems to have realized immediate- ly that there was something entirely out of the ordinary, and that needed attention. So it does. That extra appalling crime strikes than a mere murder by bad boys. It seems almost like an our civilization, of the of the education that is being given to the young. For these boys who killed make so nary a stir? rdinary and one as more arraignment of industrial system, their companion—and what other shock- ing crimes they may have committed, no one knows yet—were very clever men- tally, high scholars in their colleges, amply provided with money and m oF ars and whatever else figures in cur- rent thought as the means of happiness. They had no need to kill anybody They were well appearing boys. But now it is disclosed that under that ap- pearance they were devils, with very able brains but no moral There was nothing in them apparently that told them that anything was wrong that they wanted to do. What they had really been taught outside of the schools and colleges does not appear. Evident- ly they had nothing that could be called sense. religion, Whether their families had it, whether their families held with the Synagogue, is not told. What we see PUBLISHIN use, Breams Bldgs., 1 by COMPANY Le Rov Mintes, ec, New York jon, E. C. is two ingenious, lively minds, furnished with ample material powers to act, and running loose in the world with nothing inside of them to restrain them from any crime that they thought they could hide Why, that is amazing! The case of those boys in a way is like the case of modern war, which modern science has made so powerful for destruction that it seems no longer safe to let it go on. The Hol- Back of malfeasances, The papers are full of crimes murder rate is extremely high ups and knock-outs abound. all the daily what proportion of minds is there that are like the minds of boys? What re nowadays in our population and particularly in the The newspaper crimes seem to be done mostly between the ages of 15 and 25. Is the wrong? record of those Chicag. devils is Proportion of rising generation? rising generation growing up The first aim of education should be to teach people to be good. If they are going to be bad, better leave them uneducated. Is our education fail- ing in this job of teaching goodness? Are these Chicago boys just a couple of sporadic degenerates, or are they sig- nificant of a deep-seated disease of the times? Certainly they something to discuss. Not so very dif- ferent from theirs was the case of the Staten Island man who was convicted the other day of the murder of a woman in his motor car. He was not so highly educated as these boys, nor the son of millionaire parents, but he showed the What of people who have no moral sense? Are they lunatics? What is best to do with them? Kill them? The World speaking of the Chicago boys, “From any point of view the best out- come is a swift and sure end, and then oblivion.” But what does it mean by To forget them? No! No have given us same total lack of moral sense. says, oblivion ? They should not be forgotten. They are extremely important. They must be discussed. The thing is to find out what they mean, what produced them, how many like them knocking around, and how the production of such monsters can be avoided. We do not know enough to manage the world we live in. We do not un- derstand this world that men have made; a world of motor cars, of tele phones, of all manter of high-power weapons, of highly developed scientific knowledge. The reason why the dread- ful exploit of those Chicago boys people such a shock was that it stirred there ari ave in them a shivering suspicion that the kind of civilization we have set up is producing more problems than we can handle. has a long- C JLONEL HARVEY standing need for a political organ in which he can express himself in Pres- idential campaigns. He had Harper's Weekly up to 1913. He had Harvey's Weekly in and following 1916. He has had the North Review this long time, and now he is to be chief spokesman of McLean's Washir ton Post, a paper amply backed with money, and virtually sure to survive the campaign It scems as if a weekly would be bet- ter for the Colonel, a weekly not too : for weeklies are less local than dailies can be. However, as to that he is the doctor. What he says is sure to get around if it is interesting. no matter what sort of organ he puts it in, He is a very interesting politi- cian, who has had a large, a very large share in making two Presidents, one somewhat against his will, the other with his full consent. He calls himself nowadays an independent Independent, but his job this summer apparently will be to support Mr. Coolidge. It {merican is an altogether extraordinary job, and he is an altogether extraordinary politician. One cannot but wonder what he will make of it, and how he will be able to support Mr. Coolidge without a serious rupture of amity with his own. late political intimates who have been so busy and so successful in rubbing Mr Coolidge’s nose in the dirt E. S. Ma comicbooks.com