USA > Indiana > Lake County > The First Hundred Years (1938) > Part 24
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
The farmer has furnished such a large amount of good food products regularly to the cities, and the consuming public has not appreciated it even though it has been at a low price. The price of the farm products depreciated from 1919 to 1929, causing loss of buying power to the farmer and this resulted in the col- lapse of all other business interests. The church should under- stand that and act accordingly.
One of the great needs of labor is good food and plenty of it, and we hope, for the good of the nation as well as the farmer, that they (the church) will have sense enough to demand justice and a fair remuneration for the farmer's labor, for that is the only condition that will bring about harmony and steady pros- perity.
In the "new deal" everybody's hours of labor are regulated, excepting those of the farmer and the housewife. They may work as long as they will. If they would manage to put the farmers on a thirty or forty hour week, they could use all the idle men on the farms. However, the farm products would cost two or three times as much as they do now. The ministers may say the farm- er has a job. Yes, but there are not many of the city fellows who would take the job and do the work if it were offered to them. The harder the farmer works at his job the poorer he gets. As far as we know to date the church has scarcely indicated that she knows of the existence of any depression on the farm, and that it is a very serious matter and deserves the attention of the church-not for the country church alone, but for the entire church.
-S. B. W.
DILLINGER AND JUSTICE
According to newspapers, Dillinger was an ordinary boy on the farm, who went to public school and to Sunday school. He likely was gifted with ambition and determination, and life on the farm was too slow for him-so he did some stealing to get some "easy money" and was sent to the penitentiary. There he -came in contact with criminals of all classes and completed his education in crime. From his actions after he got out at the close of his first term, he had no other ambition except to be a
-247-
first class criminal. He was surely a success along that line. He could commit a crime, be tried in court, go back to prison, be paroled out so he could commit more crime and he, like a lot of others, got to thinking he was better and bigger than the law. He employed modern means, such as automobiles and machine guns, and our law enforcement officers and courts of justice have not kept up with the procession. The criminal has the advantage.
Estill went to Tucson, Arizona, in a great rush and with flourish of trumpets and got Dillinger and put him in the Crown Point jail, where he is guarded at great expense. The prosecut- ing attorney made a grand stand play for publicity in having his picture taken with this criminal in loving embrace and he is getting it, but it is not particularly favorable to the reputation of Mr. Estill. People are disgusted, and they have a right to be, with the whole proceedings.
It is said that Dillinger will ask for a change of venue and can get it. He will claim that he cannot get a fair trial in this county. He and his lawyer will spar to beat justice.
Monday's Hammond Times headings: "Delay in Dillinger Trial Is Impending" and "Possibility of Long Delay With the Always Impending Danger of an Attempted Rescue." Of course his lawyer is not prepared to act, and if they do not want to come to trial they do not have to.
"Dillinger Seeks Habeas Writ," or some other hokus pokus to kill time and give him all the advantage, delay the trial and give his pals time to kill the principal witnesses as they did in the Fancher case, where the trial was dragged out so long that the witnesses died from old age and the murderer went free. This procedure of course would make more business for the law- yers. Crime makes the lawyer's harvest, and they do not try to cut down their crop of criminals.
We have been down to the last two legislatures at Indiana- polis trying to get a bill through changing procedure so that the criminal will not have all the advantage, but will get swift jus- tice, but our legislature is made up largely of lawyers and they are not in favor of swift justice. The more they can play ball with crime the greater will be their harvest, and they are not going to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg." We got the bill introduced and it went to the committee on judiciary, which is made up of lawyers entirely. They did not report it, but sat down on it and it "never saw daylight."
The Bar Association of Indiana has talked and talked and talked, and has done nothing and we do not expect them to do anything. That is the way it was in England. There was need of a change of court procedure and the lawyers there would do
-248-
nothing. The people rose up en masse and compelled a change of laws. This is of enough importance to cause the people to compel a candidate for the legislature to pledge that he will work for a change of court procedure and not vote for him un- less he makes such a pledge. Swift justice would reduce crime immensely and would save millions of dollars per year to our state.
THIS AND THAT
Verily, verily I say unto you, man is so fearfully and wonder- fully made that he can conceive of many, many things to do in this "new deal." Now it comes to pass that seventy-five engin- eers are down on the Kankakee river bottoms, trying to turn that farming country back into a wilderness where they may raise wild ducks, geese, pond lilies and bull frogs. We are certainly in a "new deal," and it seems to us there is a great deal of dam- phoolishness.
February, 1934
NATION CELEBRATES LINCOLN 125th ANNIVERSARY
Lincoln, our great Civil war president, was born on the twelfth day of February, 1809, making this twelfth day of Feb- ruary, 1934, the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth. As the years go by, every succeeding birthday of the martyred president seems to bind the people to him with strong- er ties of esteem, admiration and love. Why is this? What was there about Abraham Lincoln that makes the common people- not only of the United States, but of the world-admire and wor- ship him? It was that he had human sympathy, a kind heart and honest judgment; and he was not corrupted by position and power. His often quoted saying showed his character and dis- position : "God loves the common people or he would not have made so many of them."
Another of his sayings is a guide for the people of these United States, and if they, as a whole, had sense enough to fol- low it, it would revolutionize for the better our government. Here it is (commit it to memory and repeat it over every morn- ing when you get up, and make it the guide of your life) : "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
That puts upon us the responsibility of understanding our duty and also the responsibility of doing our duty as we under- stand it, and requiring honesty, determination and intelligence. If the majority of people lived and acted according to Lincoln's rule this country would be safe and prosperous. But so long as
-249-
fifty per cent of the people do not think enough to compel them to go and vote, and fifty per cent that do vote are influenced by what someone else says or does, we may expect just about what we are getting now, or something worse.
We use very little judgment in electing our state and nation- al representatives, and we find they do not know much more than we do. So they act as a rubber stamp for the governor and president and let them do it. Is that what Lincoln calls the "government of the people, for the people, and by the people"? Not by a long shot! The people must wake up and dare to do their duty as they understand it, or our Ship of State will go on the rocks.
As we see it, what made Lincoln a great man was that he was honest. He tried honestly to understand the truth of things, made his own conclusions, acted on his own best judgment, and was not afraid to act. That should not be considered great and wonderful, but it seems so rare that when a man lives that kind of a life he is worshiped seventy years after his death, and held up as a model the world over.
It is said of Lloyd George, one of the greatest men of Eng- land, that his office and rooms are hung with the pictures and sayings of our own American, Abraham Lincoln. You might think he would favor the pictures of the royalty of England.
If we think so much of Lincoln and hold him in such high esteem, would it not be a good plan to order our lives after his idea that "right makes might" and "dare to do our duty as we understand it"? If a majority did that, there would be a sur- prise coming to this nation.
-S. B. W.
THAT ESTILL - DILLINGER PICTURE
Yes, Prosecutor Estill is getting plenty of publicity in hug- ging Dillinger. Here is a sample from a San Diego, California, paper, written by M. E. Tracy :
"Last Thursday I saw a picture in two metropolitan dailies which portrayed Prosecutor Estill of Crown Point, Indiana, with his arm around John Dillinger, while the latter leaned chummily on his shoulder.
"It was just as though the prosecutor were blatting to every- body : 'See me! I'm in a picture with a great criminal. It's quite true that I'll presently be asking a jury to send him to the chair, but there's nothing personal in it, and since he is better known than I am, why shouldn't I horn in on the publicity ?'
"I don't know how you feel about such things, but if I were governor of Indiana I'd get that prosecutor out of the Dillinger
-250-
case if it was the last service I rendered to a long suffering public. I'd get him out on the ground that he was just too weak mentally to sense the elemental duties of his job.
Now don't jump on the newspapers. It was too good a story, too obviously a laugh for any wide awake editor to pass up.
"Take your 12-year-old boy, or a neighbor's 12-year-old boy if you don't happen to have one, and try to make him understand what it means. Ask him if he'd hug a kid who had broken every rule in the game. Ask him if he gets the idea that a great crim- inal has been caught after a long and expensive chase. Ask him if he thinks the man standing beside that criminal will take the business of prosecuting him in dead earnest.
"Isn't it true that what the kids see in our attitude toward crime now will weave itself into their attitude as grown men and women 10, 15 or 20 years hence ?"
-S. B. W.
WELL DESERVED CONTEMPT
Here is a man who expresses himself in the "Voice of the People" of the Chicago Tribune on the above subject and who thinks our legal profession is a joke :
"A recent issue of the New York Law Journal laments the widespread stage and screen ridicule of bench and bar. It fears that the legal profession may be brought into disrepute.
"That's one of the funniest fears this writer has seen feared right out in public for a good long while. Just a glance at some of the farces lately run off in our local courts gives piquancy to the laments of the learned Journal.
"In spite of the upturned eyes of the American Bar Associa- tion and its pious tut-tuts on the subject of ethics, the criminal branch of the profession has sunk so low in public contempt that it now has to reach up to touch bottom .- Ed Coke."
March, 1934
IS IT THE WAR SPIRIT ?
There seems to be some devilish spirit abroad in this land that is bound to get us into trouble. In our broken down condi- tion and the desperate effort made for reconstruction, the mili- tary and war spirit seems to think this is the proper time to get in its work, and it is bringing it forward from every angle and working without ceasing, and it seems to be a well laid propagan- da to carry out a plan to spend billions of dollars for war ma- chinery. They will get away with it if the better class of sensible people do not wake up to the danger of the situation and fight the proposition. They, like the wets, have secured the help of the
-251-
metropolitan papers, and they do not lose an opportunity to show we have got to be "prepared," or some country will come in here and swallow us whole. Arthur Brisbane, in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, jumps at every chance to show the need of "preparedness." Do you notice that all of the numerous cor- respondents of these big papers run true to form? When the big paper takes snuff, all its correspondents sneeze, showing they write what they are paid for.
This is an age of money. The paper and its writers are sold to the highest bidder, and what is printed in those papers, let the reader beware. The Herald and Examiner is carrying a lot of pictures from battle fronts, as they say, to "carry warning to America." The idea is to show the horrors of war, which of course the pictures do. They make your blood run cold. But where the difference comes in-they are going to keep us out of war by being prepared for war, by being stronger than the oth- er fellow, so he will be afraid of you and won't tackle you. But these countries that are prepared for war are trained for war, and they always get into war. If Germany had not prepared for war, but had intelligently attended to her business, she would be a prosperous, happy nation today. Look at Denmark, Sweden and Norway today. At the time of the World War they were in the midst of it. They quietly attended to their own business and were let alone, and now they are going along in the even tenor of their way, doing well, and are happy.
The saying that "pride goeth before a fall" is too true with the military spirit. When a country gets rich and strong, then a certain class of the people get the idea that they want to fight someone, and as sure as they do they have a fall. The military men hold up Japan as a great menace, when there is nothing to it. One of their best men says, "We want cordial fellowship and close friendship with Americans for all time." The American people should show good sense in this matter.
THE AIR MAIL
There seems to be a great difference of opinion in regard to the government's action in the air mail carrying controversy. Some say, "Instead of throwing all the private airways over- board at once, a thorough investigation should have been made, and if there was crooked work, the guilty punished, but not all should suffer for the sins of the few." We are inclined to feel that Roosevelt is justified in his severe action with the private air lines. This grafting on the public must be stopped. It is a serious case and it requires a severe remedy to do justice to the situation.
-252-
If the army men and army planes are not capable of carry- ing the mails, they are not capable of doing a good job of fighting, and it is high time we are finding out the weak spots. Carrying the mails is a good way to test them out, and if occasion arises for protecting the country they will be better able to do it. It is a mighty good idea to give these idle army men something to do -to keep them out of mischief, and also to let them earn their money.
According to the Chicago Tribune the congressional investi- gation has found that we have spent two hundred million dol- lars since 1921 and the money is virtually squandered, for we have an inefficient air force. Our planes cannot fly as high nor as fast as planes of other countries.
To us it seems our military men are not so much interested in having equipment to meet the enemy as they are in having a lot of money to spend. These fellows preparing for war are go- ing to get us into trouble. We had better prepare for peace.
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN
They are having a good time down in South America. In Argentina they were having an automobile race. One of the racers swerved to avoid hitting a drunken man who got on the track, struck the onlookers and killed eleven. One of our happy citizens of Gary was so overjoyed at the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment that he went home and knocked out his wife's teeth -just to express himself in proper manner.
The best minds of our country are giving great thought and consideration to the all-important question of the price of in- toxicating liquors. It is one of the great and important questions of the day. The tax must be high enough to raise the revenue. If the revenue is great, there must be a large consumption, and if the price is too high the good, patriotic people who are willing to pay the revenue are put at a disadvantage. To know just what to do is one of the great questions of the New Deal. About the only way out, as we see it, is more drinking to raise the prom- ised revenue. So the drys will have to go to drinking. One judge in Chicago proposes to have a happy time with the saloonkeepers. He gives orders to the police that when they arrest a man for being drunk they shall arrest the saloonkeeper who sold him the liquor. He says he will fine them both. That looks about right to us.
-253-
THE CARR CASE
Here is the Druscilla Carr case again, as given by the Gary Post Tribune :
"Sixty-eight years ago-in 1876-two newlyweds came to what now is part of Gary and settled on the land in the vicinity of where the Grand Calumet river emptied into Lake Michigan near what is now Gary's lake front (Marquette) park. The newlyweds were Robert Carr and his wife, Druscilla.
"Nearly 30 years ago these two newlyweds found themselves entangled in their first court skirmish over possession of the land on which they had settled. They had claimed title to the proper- ty through 'squatter's rights,' but arrayed against them for pos- session of the land was the United States Steel Corporation. For 30 years the legal battle for title to the valuable tract has been fought through many lower courts in this part of the state and time and again has been carried to Indiana's higher courts.
"The Indiana appellate court now 'finally' has ruled in favor of the 'squatter's right' title to the property, once occupied by Mrs. Druscilla Carr, and against the tax title claimed by the Gary Land Company, steel corporation subsidiary.
"However, the higher court in a 10,000-word opinion said that to obtain the 'squatter's right' title to the tract, the Carr heirs and other appellants must pay to the Gary Land Company $59,053, plus interest, which represents the amount the land company has paid in taxes on the 40-odd acre tract of lake shore property in the last 20 years. The court gave the appellants 120 days in which to reimburse the land company if they desire to take title to the property."
Their worthless piece of land became valuable when Gary dropped down there and the Steel Company and lawyers kept them busy until they both died, and now they are after the heirs. There are now thirteen persons claiming to have an in- terest in this land. The majority of the appellants are lawyers, or heirs of lawyers, who at some time or other represented the late Mrs. Carr's interests.
Frank B. Pattee, lawyer at Crown Point, represented Mrs. Carr at one time and paid the taxes on this land. Mrs. Carr claimed the understanding was that Mr. Pattee was to hold the tax receipts until she could pay him, but he sold them to the Steel Company and that is where they got the hook on Mrs. Carr.
Now do you think if we had courts of real justice it would have taken 20 or 30 years to settle this case? And do you think there should have been $59,053 taxes on the 40-odd acres in the last 20 years?
-254
You see, with the process of the courts and the manipulation of the lawyers, those people are robbed of their property. Oh, Lord, how long will the suffering people stand for this thing?
March, 1934
THE MILK WAGON DRIVERS
The sixty-six hundred milk wagon drivers, through their rep- resentatives, have been laboring with the milk distributors' rep- resentatives in regard to the wages of the drivers. They have been getting the wages reduced somewhat, but the dealers are asking the drivers to take off another $5 per week. This they do not want to do, but, with the reduced price of milk to the consu- mer, it looks reasonable. The milk wagon driver's increase in wages was phenomenal. Taking the 1913 wage scale as 100 per cent, in 1927 it represented 322 per cent, or $8.72 per day. But they are now down to $6.90 a day. At one time the driver re- ceived more for delivering a quart of milk than the farmer did for producing it. Where is the justice ?
MORE ABOUT THE DILLINGER ESCAPE
The devilish, diabolical Dillinger case is just another one of the many farces that our court procedure has put over for "Lo, these many years". We should not blame the sheriff and others whose duty it was to keep Dillinger until the court got good and ready to try him. But for that with all the fuss and feathers they made with their strong body of guards armed to their teeth that he should turn the tables on them and walk out with a wooden gun was ridiculous to say the least. The real trouble is with our laws and court procedure. Everybody knows it and for years men with a conscience have tried to bring about a change in our laws governing court procedure. Years ago Johannes Kopelka of Crown Point, an able lawyer and at one . time a good judge, made a noble effort to change the laws so that it would be possible to get swift justice in our courts, but he could get but very little support. He got disgusted and quit, saying, "The way of the reformer is hard."
When Martin J. Smith was judge, he saw the great need of a change in our laws and gave a great deal of time and study to the subject and finally wrote a bill that he thought would change the order of court procedure in the interests of swift justice to the citizens as well as to the criminal. We had Mr. Smith's pro- posed change printed in pamphlet form and distributed all over the state, mostly through the Farm Bureau organization, as a matter of education. When the legislature met I went there with the bill and wanted one of our county senators to introduce
-255-
it, but he did not want to do it, so I got our joint representative, Balser Hoffman, to introduce it, which he did. It went to a com- mittee of lawyers and they sat on it; it never again saw daylight. In the last political campaign, John Underwood, deputy prose- eutor, made a speech at Griffith and was telling us what they had accomplished and what they had failed to accomplish on ac- count of our laws and court procedure being too much in favor of the criminal. At the close of his speech I went to him and said, "According to your talk, we need a change of our laws governing court procedure." He said, "We must have it if we are going to get justice !"
Men of national reputation say the same thing. Then why do we not get it? Because most of our lawmakers are lawyers and most of the lawyers do not want swift justice. Crime is the lawyer's harvest. The more they can play ball and monkey with crime the more they get out of it. The average lawyer has a fine system and that system is to get all the money they can out of a case. If the criminal is killed and buried, that is killing the goose that lays the lawyer's golden egg.
If Dillinger had been electrocuted inside of twenty-four hours after he landed in Crown Point, that would have saved a lot of money for the taxpayers, but there would not have been so much honor and glory, cheap publicity and money in it for some- body else. The Dillinger case is not the only one, by a long shot. In the Fancher case, where the young lawyer was killed at the Halfway house between Crown Point and Cedar Lake, Frank Mc- Erlane and his gang were caught red handed. The courts "dilly- dallied" around and finally convicted one of them. Mr. Cochran of Crown Point, the principal witness in the case, was found dead one morning on the streets of Crown Point. The people were scared stiff and there was not an effort made to find out who killed Cochran, as far as I ever heard. McErlane could not get justice in Lake county (was it justice he wanted?), so he got a change of venue to Valparaiso and was tried there and I was told by a man who should know that the jury knew he was guilty and should hang, but the jury was afraid and set him free, and McErlane carried on his law-breaking business and made more business for the lawyers.
The case of the bombed theater at Hammond has been stall- ing for five years. The witnesses have gone away or died, and I understand for lack of something the case is dead.
The Kirkland case from Gary is a fine specimen of what our present court procedure and lawyers can do, as are also this morning's headings in the Chicago papers: "Receivership Fees Total 56 Million," "Huge Sum Paid Lawyers," "Profits Shared
-256-
by Favored Few," "Chicago Lawyers and Receivers, With the Sanction and Assistance of Superior and Circuit Court Judges, Have Been Able to Take from Impoverished Real Estate Invest- or," and so on, and so forth. What will be done about it? I do not know. But I think I know if the people will stand for this kind of treatment much longer they are a lot of D- F-'s.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.