MURDERS IN AMERICA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3687, 6 September 1927, Page 4

MURDERS IN AMERICA.

MANY DEATHS IN CITIES.

LAWLESS SOUTHERN STATES.

One person in every 10,000 met death by violence last year in 118 cities of the United States, where a survey of crime conditions has just been concluded. There were 12,000 deaths —a rate of 10.1 per, 100,000, , as compared with 10.5 per 100,000 for the previous year. No distinction has been drawn in , the figures between murder, man- , slaughter and justifiable homicide. It is scarcely possible to do so in the United States, because of differences _in the 'State laws, the attitudes taken by juries toward those ' accused of murder and the large number of crimes for which nobody is ever brought to trial. A comparison made by one American paper states that there were only 17 murders in London last. Ij-ear, and that there were arrests in 16 of the eases Last year there 'were 510 cases of homicide in ChiI cago, which still 'leads the rest ot American cities in aggregate number of murders. New York, with twice Chicago’s population, report,ed 340 cases. Chicago however, is slowly getting better. The 1926 record worked out at 16.7 homicides , per 100,000 of population, which was 2.1 fewer than in 1925.

Judged by the rate per 100,000 of

population, many smaller cities have an even higher rate than Chicago. The southern -States are by far the worst offenders. With the exception of Kansas City, which is on the borber line, all the twelve leading cities in the homicide table arc in the southern be'lt. Jacksonville had 104 .crimes of violence among its population of 137,000. Yet, in the northern city a population of about 150,000, there were only two homicides in 1926. Similar comparisons are made between other southern and northern cities, to the humiliation of the south. There is a tendency of point to America’s enormous increase in wealth as a basic reason for the national murder mania. This theory assumes that the temptations to gain big returns for human slaughter are much greater in the United States than elsewhere, and so homicide is encouraged. But, unfortunately for this theory, it in the north that riches have expanded most rapidly. In the southern States there is widespread economic backwardness. The worst poverty in America is among the southerners. •Similarly the theory breaks down that attributes America’s criminal excesses to its alien population. By ’far the majority of aliens reaching the United States disperse among the northern and more wealthy Stages. The southern States do not attract foreigners, and, indeed, are losing their own negro population, 'owing to the higher wages offered in the north. Uan it he, the Evening Standard asks, that the widespread ignorance prevalent in the South is the true reason 1 ? The southern ‘States are notorious for their reactionary educational tendencies.