THE LAND OF THE FREED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 618, 24 August 1933, Page 4

THE LAND OF THE FREED

Even to Americans, Major Brown's revelations of the extent of the gangster industry must have been surprising. According to President Roosevelt's plan of reconstruction, coal, steel, oil and automobile manufacturing are the four chief industries of the United States. Unfortunately the "back ' to beer" campaign has largely ruined the flourishing condition of the bootlegging trade but apparently in the larger field, crime is more than holding its own/ Maintaining gangsters in the style to which they have been accustomed, Major Brown stated with gentle irony, is costing every man, woman and child in the United States £35 a year. After this, New Zealanders with their very modest contribution towards this worthy cause, may well feel a twinge of compunction at. their niggardly treatment of these deserving suhjects. America has been described as the land of the free and again, more caustically, as the land of the freed. But, as Major Brown pointed out, the colossal sum of 13 billion dollars has been spent upon crime and Americans notoriously expect full value for their money. No country in the world at the present time can point to such | a high standard of living in its underworld and this in spite of the depression. American gangstedom cannot be accused of being out of date in its methods. All the latest refinements of modern warfare, the neatest and most effective adaptations of machine guns, tanks and armoured cars, find intelligent and appreciative support in well informed gangster quarters. Progressivenegs should have itje reward, and if Major Brown and his associates persist in endeavouring to curb this enterprising spirit, much that is joyous and refreshing in American life will have departed. What will the news of the world be without

its picturesque machine gun artists, its kidnapping entertainers and incidental side-showmen It would only require Herr Hit- j ler and General O'Duffy to re- i tire upon their laurels and the j world's cable news would read like the supplement to the Financial Times and Trade Review.