The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1931-01-16
7heCherry
" Where with our
fDD Little Hatchet
we tell the truth
about many things. sometimes pro-
foundly, sometimes nippantly,
sometimes recklessly.


mayor who has lost his illusions. He
is "sick and disgusted" with trying
to force people to obey laws that they
do not want to obey.
Mayor Joseph L. EHefferman, of the
Ohio city that has been helped along
to fame by the manipulations incident
to the effort to consolidate various
steel plants and that made bid back
in 1914 when the Youngstown Sheet
and Tube Company drove it's en-
ployes to desperation and a strike,
has himself gained no little notoriety
because of his disgust.
Mayor Hefferman thinks we are all
committed to the dominant ideal of
getting money" and that "Caponeism
is the beautiful flower of our national
philosophy"
The mayor is right when he con-
cludes that certain laws cannot be en-
forced, but he is wrong about the
reason.
The American people have not gone
mad over money-getting. The great
masses of the people have never had
enough money to breed among them
the idea that large amounts of money
can be got either easily or quickly.
Only few have money and they are
not numerous enough to create ma
tional psychology.
Caponeism is not the flower of
national philosophy, nor is it in any
sense the result of any national feel
ing or national will.
The people today violate laws be-
cause they have been sleepy enough
to allow minorities to write laws with
which the majority never agreed.
| Wherever n,inorities press down
upon majorities and by power of
tricks deny them what they believe to
be basic rights, then there will be law
violation.
Capone "gets BY" not because he is
admired, but because of legislative
repression for which he supplies a
sort of antidote.
The industrial life of the time con-
| tributes its share of resentment.
Here again there is despotism-as in
Danville-and resentment is the re-
suit. There is an effort to break
through the bonds. In reality the eff
fort that Mayor Hefferman finds dis
gusting is in large part the express
sion of craving for normal living.
for freedom from bondage, for a
chance to hold up the head and make
decisions.
That the reaction against bondage
goes "too far" may be admitted. The
repression is abnormal; the reaction
is abnormal. The autocratic employer
mows down and destroys beautiful
| human heritage. Somewhere there is
going to be penalty to pay for that
| destruction.
Philosophers and mayors do not al
ways get things straight. Quite often
they fail to see the roots of things
because they are looking in the clouds.
People are just as good" today as
ever, but every age has had its own
definition of what is good" in people.
And in any age various layers of
people have various ideas about what
is meant by good"
Mr.. j. P. Morgan thinks one thing
is good. Mr.. Average Worker thinks
that very same thing is absolutely
bad. The mill owner thinks one thing
| is good, while the mill worker finds
that thing very bad.
Our way of living and of making
things has raced away ahead of our
ability to make rules for its opera
ton. SO we have these terrible bulges
in the legal structure and in relations
between employers and employees
these mighty sore spots.
1t is natural that resentments
should operate. Mayor Hefferrman
| has found out merely that people
won't be good, as he sees being good
just because of laws. There must be
| reason back of the laws, and the
laws must relate to the life and the
ways of TODAY. not of Yesterday