The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1910-10-02
WITTY "a LAWLESS CITY,

The church organ on FRIDAY evening
bad political editorial on "a Law
less City and it imputed whatever
criminal practices are rife here to the
organization and control of the Amer,
lean party In this, however, the
church organ was radically wrong, as
usual, The chief and most conspicuous
form of lawbreaking hero is exactly
what the American party has always
condemned and is most anxious to stop.
The headquarters of that particular
brand of crime is the same as the head
quarters of the church. The head of
the Mormon church dehantly proclaims
that he is a aw-breaker and that he
intends to continue to live in defiance
Of tho laws of God and man; and his
position in effect is that there is no
power in earth or heaven to bring him
into subsection to either human or di-
vine law. He is fsustained in that
position by his vast congregation, num-
bering scores of thousands of people.
When lawlessness is openly proclaimed
from high places and when the duty
of obeying the law is contemptuously
loutcd by the most influential leaders
Of great society, and successfully
dcfcd because they are able to paralyZe
and punish any court that would inter
fere with them, it is quite natural that
regard for the law should be at low
ebb among their followers, and in fact
generally. So low, in fact, that the
ordinary police forco finds itself occa-
sionally baffled in undertaking to deal
with crime.
When community is thoroughly per
meated with the idea, as the Mormon
ecclesiasts have completely indoctrin-
ated their people, that the law is some
thing to be spurned and disregarded
at will; when In fact it is openly pro-
claimed that the law is oppressive, un-
Just, and prosecuting, negligible, as
merely "man-made,' it is no wonder
that other criminal minded people than
those who belong to that priestly class:
will make haste to defy tho law In the
same way If We could get hero n
sound public sentiment, concurred In
by all, that the law must be obeyed
because it is the law, and without re-
gard to anyhody's private opinion
about it, then a long step in advance
for the upholding Of law and the pun
ishment of crime would have been
taken,
1t has often been pointed out that
the police force Of Salt Lake City is
very much smaller in proportion to the
total population than the police forces
in other cities 1t is true that there is
crime here aside from the chief cult
of crime above referred to, just as
there is crime in other metropolitan
cities the world over. The only thing
that law-abiding citizens can do is to
support the police and add TO their
numbers wherever needed and prac-
ticabIe, doing everything that can be
to the eradication of criminal elements
and the diminutiou Of crime. But
where there is a large and influential
class of the community that holds no
allegiance to the civil law, and does
not consider itself bound by the law,
as law, and is in hearty accord only
with certain processes of the criminal
law, defying other portions at It's will,
it cannot be expected that law, as law
will receive the same veueration and
support that it has in other communi-
ties where law, as law, is respected and
revercd.