The Nome daily nugget., 1935-12-03

And before you and I try to fig ure out which one of these spell binders is right about "what Amer lea needs" 1t might be well to know just what they're talking about when they say "America." Certainly when they tell us that what will solve America's problem "from the rock bound coast of Maine to the shores of sunny California" is tax on mustache cups or a return to null tiple petticoats, they are not talk ing about the land itself.
 No elm tree ever started a con- munist meeting under its shade In the public park. No mountain ever wrote a letter to the editor which began: "Sir: I note, not without some due alarm, that things have come to a pretty pass when, etc" The land never needed anything un- til we started living on It.
 When the stump-speakers refer to America" they mean us-yOu and I and those awful Smiths or JOneses or Czerwinskis who ran that un- speakable speakeasy below the tracks. They mean society.
 And what is Society in AmeRfa? There are some 13O,OOO,O00 of GUS" To decide what 130,000,0OO people need let's find out what kind of people they are.
 The contrasts between class groups is really as startling as that between individuals. To begin at the very bottom of our society, there are, according to J. Edgar Hoover and the Department of Justice, no less than 4,S11,S ,S66 active criminals whose fingerprints are on file In 1 Washington. A few thousand of these are constituencies, bold ras- calls who would slit their own grand mothers throat for five bucks, but the vast majority are only petty crooks who would steal the pennies out of a blind mans cup, or put on dark glasses and pretend to be blind men themselves.
 Probably 2O,OOO,0OO are on the dole-getting relief. There Is un- doubtedly some overlapping be- tween this and the first group. Three-fourths of all the nations families live on incomes of less than S2,OOO a year. And there are only 46 persons-one in every 2,S26,0S7- whose income is S1,OOO,OOO year or more.
 Many Crooks Go Free.
 Roughly, and purely for the pur- pose of comparison, our society may be cleaved into two divisions, ad- mittedly arbitrary. They are 75 per cent of the families on less than S2,O0O income and the other 25 per cent, some merely solvent, some "well-to-do" and some wealthy.
 In the larger group are approxi- mately 97,0OO0OO persons. These include all but few of the 4,S11,- S66 criminals, proving that crime does not pay. Only about 12,600 are regarded as "big shots," public en- emies, by the Department of Jus tice. Yet crime is said to cost S12,- OOO,OOO,OOO to $15,0OO,O00,000 in America.
 Federal and state prisons and re- formatories in 1892 were entertain ing only 64,447 "guests." The num- Der of persons in city and county jails Is believed to fluctuate around 300,000 These totals leave more than 100000 criminals actually practlcing their art.
 Living conditions of the great mass of 2O,OOO,0OO on relief are cer' tainly much below standard, but these conditions vary greatly with the geography of the country. Te people on relief in Mississippi ol Arkansas, the living standards oi relief families in Chicago, New YorE or one of the other larger cities would look pretty good. The whole group Is equal in the condition that 1t has been parted from all valu able possessions.
 Research conducted by the PWA reveals that 38 per cent of all tht housing in the United States 1! "deflnitely substandard." In som, southern states. where the share