CRIME IN U.S.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 105, 16 February 1950, Page 5

CRIME IN U.S.

CALL FOR MORAL CRUSADE FORCES LIVING ON VICE • {N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) (10.15) WASHINGTON, Feb. 15. President Truman to-day called for a great moral crusade against organised crime in the United States. President Truman said the war had been followed by “a resurgence of underworld forces living on vice and greed." He told a gathering of Federal, State and local law enforcement officials that there should be complete co-operation among them to combat this. President Truman indicated that he considered it of equal importance that the nation as a whole be educated to higher moral values. “We must encourage education, religious instruction, home training in family and in the guidance of our children. Without moral backing we will wind ; up with a totalitarian form of government.’’

The Attorney-General, Mr J. Howard McGrath, called to-day for a nation-wide drive against gambling' rackets which, he said, now cost the public “billions of dollars andlhreaten to make mockery of respectable selfgovernment.” Mr McGrath sounded his call for action in a speech to a crime conference of representatives of State, Municipal and Federal governments. Mr McGrath said: “The mobsters of the 1930’s have not been eliminated entirely.” He added that gambling is demoralising the nation’s children.