Turning back again to the more general question, however, I cannot agree with Mr. Hoover that the solution of the lawlessness of America, with the peril that it brings to our form of government, lies in so simple a formula as “obey every law on the statute book or get it repealed.” Criminals are not going to obey any laws that are not enforced, and the governments—federal, state, and municipal—have largely abandoned their duty of law enforcement. Last autumn the New York Telegram reported that “Chicago racketeers boast of 215 murders in two years without a single conviction.” In London in six months, with more than twice the population, there were eighteen murders and every single murderer either paid the legal penalty promptly or committed suicide before he was caught. But even law-abiding citizens will not obey laws which are but partially and unjustly enforced. Our whole history has proved that. Would one-tenth of the merchants of New York pay duties on their goods if they knew that the other nine-tenths were allowed to import free? Year after year, on returning home, I have scrupulously listed all my purchases for the customs men on the dock, and, I will add, have usually been treated courteously by them. But what incentive is there to do so when, as last year, in the cabin before landing, one heard the names of twelve Irish and Hebrew gentlemen, otherwise never heard before, called out as having been given the freedom of the port? For two hours I had to keep my wife, who was ill, on the dock in sweltering heat while these friends of somebody in the Treasury Department had whirled off at once to their hotels or homes without paying a cent or having a key[Pg 142] of their baggage turned. Does not that sort of thing, encountered at every turn in America in relation to governments, city, state and national, tend to make a good citizen feel rather like a conscientious idiot than like an upholder of the wise and honest laws of his country? Can respect for law continue when its daily enforcement is a matter of friendship and favoritism? No—nor will citizens obey, nor as juries enforce, laws with unjust penalties. How many juries under the Jones Act will find a man guilty of taking a drink if the penalty is the same as for homicide? Nor will citizens obey laws, such as the smoke ordinances, which the government itself breaks. Nor will they obey laws which they believe thoroughly unjust and infringing on personal liberty. If disobedience to just laws leads to anarchy, obedience to unjust laws leads to tyranny, as our forefathers well understood and implored us to remember.