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Show Desire to Get Rich Quick Without Work Root of Increase of Crime By RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE. The stock speculation craze of the American people leads one to wonder why there is not more crime than there is. You can't expect a nation to be without crime which has a desire to get rich quick without work, without effort. I think this wretched, vulgar, gambling craze makes genuine legitimate business impossible. Nine-tenths of the men and women wom-en who have been sucked into this hellish craze have no more right to the money they made last year than would a man who jumped up here and held a gun to my head for my purse. Those profits put a burden on industry that created injustices to the workers. We should have nothing but contempt and loathing for that cheap, vulgar mania. The home has lost its authoritativeness, schools have become vocational voca-tional factories in which teachers are expected to be mental robots, and the church and synagogue are permitted to exist only as they keep themselves them-selves remoto from every problem of real life. The church in America does not really care, except for a few shining examples. It does not will to relate itself to real life. The trouble is that the criminal class is just taken for granted. The police don't catch criminals. They catch physicians in birth-control clinics. I venture to suggest to the police department that there are more dangerous criminals footloose today than Mrs. Margaret Sanger. The whole majesty of the police was exhibited the other day when a few CDe women were arrested doing a great, serviceable work. |