THE PUBLIC ENEMY

WESTBROOK PEGLER

A noted columnist looks at the future State where, under the N. R. A., leisure may be praised; labor penalized

SCENE: A courtroom; judge's bench; table for lawyers; witness stand.

DISCOVERED: AS curtain rises, a bailiff, in policeman's uniform, sits in a chair talking to the Clerk of the Court.

BAILIFF: What's on the docket this morning?

CLERK: United States against Otto Blatz.

BAILIFF: Oh, the sucker that was caught bootlegging working hours?

CLERK: Yes, him. (Pushes his ledger away from him.) The docket is crowded with these confounded over-work cases. And what with the law forbidding a judge to sit more than one hour a week, we'll never catch up.

BAILIFF: I hear they're appointing new judges.

CLERK: Got to. We got to have eight judges a day, each of them sitting an hour. That makes forty judges a week for each court.

BAILIFF: It'll get so there'll be so many judges and court attendants there won't be any population left to be plaintiffs and defendants. What's this Blatz case?

CLERK: The lowdown I get on it is that he was running a work-easy in a cellar on Fifty-second Street. He kept all kinds of tools there and work benches. Got so bold he was even letting in women and children.

BAILIFF: Them guys ain't never satisfied. (Enter defendant, Iawyers, and witnesses. Usual greetings.)

BAILIFF: Shush. Here comes His Honor. {Enter Judge who mounts bench. The bailiff raps for order.)

BAILIFF: Oyez, oyez, oyez. The District Court for the Southern District of the State of New York is now in session for exactly sixty minutes. The United States against Otto Blatz. Defendant, to the Bar. Otto Blatz. {Enter Blatz, his attorney, the district attorney, etc.)

JUDGE: Stand up, Blatz. Guilty or not guilty.

BLATZ: Not guilty, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Sit down, Blatz. Proceed, Mr. District Attorney. {Mr. Hoople, an Enforcement Agent, takes the stand.)

D. A.: What is your business?

HOOPLE: Enforcement Agent under the new U. S. Anti-work law.

D. A.: Are you acquainted with the defendant—Otto Blatz—and can you point him out?

HOOPLE: Right over there. {Blatzstands.)

JUDGE AND HOOPLE TOGETHER: Sit down, Blatz!

D. A.: Mr. Hoople, tell us how and when it was you became acquainted with him.

HOOPLE: On the first day of June, I raided a suspected house on Fifty-second Street. We broke in the door—

JUDGE: One moment. You broke in the door?

HOOPLE: Yes.

JUDGE: That required such tools as an axe or a sledge-hammer?

HOOPLE: It did.

JUDGE: Tell the court how such illegal tools came into your possession.

HOOPLE: I borrowed them.

JUDGE: From whom?

HOOPLE: I secured a permit from the Attorney General and got the loan of them from the Smithsonian Institute.

JUDGE: Proceed, Mr. District Attorney.

HOOPLE: I found this defendant, Blatz, dressed in overalls.

D. A.: I particularly call the attention of Your Honor to this answer. The defendant wore overalls. {To Hoople.) What apparatus did you find?

HOOPLE: We found a basement room filled with work benches, carpenter's tools, plumber's tools, ledgers for bookkeepers, and noiseless typewriters.

D. A.: Were there sewing machines?

HOOPLE: There were six, and women were operating them.

D. A.: Were children present?

HOOPLE: Eleven. The class was being taught to dig with shovels when we entered. I was shocked to see how fascinated the little ones were and to note how illicit labor seemed to excite and stimulate them.

D. A.: Were there mottoes on the walls?

HOOPLE: There were. I seized them as criminal and un-American. The first motto said "A penny saved is a penny earned"—

D. A.: Your Honor, it is not that unwholesome sentiment alone; it is the wanton, deliberate insult to the President of the United States that enrages me.

(Continued on following page)

HOOPLE: Here's another—{He displays it)—"Satan finds work for idle hands to do."

D. A.: Remember. You are on oath, Mr. Hoople. Was this motto actually on display?

HOOPLE: It was. And this one, too—the foulest of the lot, "Six days shalt thou labor."

D. A.: I submit, Your Honor, that this man is not merely a criminal, he is a degenerate. Hoople, how was food served in this place?

HOOPLE: In dinner

pails.

D. A.: Such as workingmen used to carry?

HOOPLE: Exactly.

There was a couvert charge of three dollars.

This carried with it the privilege of working for three hours. I found one man who was an addict.

He admitted that he had worked at various trades in the place, eight hours a day for five months. I found a boy of sixteen who admitted that he could not leave work alone. He stole from his employer to pay for hours of pleasure operating a ratchet screwdriver.

D. A.: Can you state, of your own knowledge, the purpose of the resort which Otto Blatz maintained at this address?

HOOPLE: It was what is described as a work-easy. It enabled people to break the law and to work any number of hours a day they desired.

D. A.: The United States rests.

JUDGE: Cross examination.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: We do not desire to cross examine. We admit the facts to be essentially as stated.

JUDGE: YOU plead guilty?

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: No, Your Honor, we plead insanity; we shall show, by evidence, that Mr. Blatz is non compos mentis and so not responsible, in law, for his actions. Mr. Blatz, take the stand. (Blatz takes the stand and sits down.)

BAILIFF: Stand up,

Blatz—rest your hand on this Bible. Do you swear, etc., etc. Sit down, Blatz.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Mr. Blatz, who was the greatest man that ever lived?

D. A.: I object to the question on the ground that it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: The answer to this question, Your Honor, will establish our contention that Mr. Blatz is deficient.

JUDGE: Objection overruled. Proceed.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Who was the greatest man that ever lived?

BLATZ: Benjamin Franklin.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Why?

BLATZ: Because he taught this country that the way to succeed was to be honest, to give an honest day's work for a day's pay, and to save your money. He believed that a busy man was happier than an idle man. He said that the way to get happiness was to earn it.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: I call Your Honor's attention to these extravagant words.

Could they issue from a sane mind? Is it possible that any man living under the New Deal could assert, as truths, such patent absurdities? Mr, Blatz, were you taught by your mother and father that idleness was reprehensible?

BLATZ: I was. My father raised a family on his wages as a carpenter. My mother was frugal. She laid by every penny. On his small earnings they were able to educate two sons and a daughter, pay for their home, and lay aside a small competence for their declining years.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: I submit that a lad reared in such foul surroundings, subject, during his plastic years, to such degenerate influences, defiled by such contacts and such teachings, could not come to manhood as anything other than he is—a mental deficient. Mr. Blatz, do you ever try to overcome your craving for work?

BLATZ: I do. But I fear that I am a periodical. At regular intervals the craving to work comes over me until I am weary, and I cannot master it.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: HOW often does this craving come?

BLATZ: Every morning it comes, but it comes with special violence every Monday morning.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: At what hour?

BLATZ: When the factory whistle blows.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: But no factory whistles blow any more. They are silent forever.

BLATZ: But they do blow! I hear them. I tell you, sir, I hear the factory whistle. It calls me. It calls me as it called my father and my grandfather and his grandfather. Don't tell me, sir, that no factory whistle sounds. It is music to me, because it means peace and plenty; it means happiness in my home and a groaning table. It means a doorstep upon which to sit in my old age, and a dollar in the bank. I say it blows. I say it is music. I tell you it blows; and if every siren on every mill in the land were silenced, it would still blow for me. I'm just an oldfashioned man. Just an old-fashioned American and for me the factory whistle will always sound. It is sounding now! JUDGE: Nonsense. Sounding where? BLATZ: In my heart. DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: The defense closes. Past any reasonable doubt I have demonstrated, and out of my client's own mouth, the feebleness of his mind. The man is insane. I ask for his acquittal.

D. A.: And I demand his conviction— his conviction and the extreme penalty!

JUDGE: I have listened to the evidence of the prosecution and of the defense. I have considered the pleas of the defendant and his regrettable antecedents. These offer no excuse. Nor do the facts adduced point to the insanity of the defendant, but to the lowest and vilest of criminal propensities. The man is abhorrent to civilization. He is a monster. Gentlemen, I find Mr. Blatz guilty of work, in the first degree.

D. A.: Your Honor, I demand the extreme penalty.

JUDGE: I shall impose it.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Not death!

JUDGE: Not death.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Not life imprisonment!

JUDGE: Not life imprisonment.

DEFENDANT'S LAWYER: Then what, Your Honor?

JUDGE: I sentence you to a spot where you will learn the spirit of true Americanism. To a spot where you will see, in operation, the finest flower of our stalwart civilization, where, if a cure for you be possible, a cure will certainly be effected, but where, if you cannot be cured, you will at least be debarred forever from degrading and harming your fellow countrymen. Therefore, Otto Blatz, I do hereby sentence you . . .

BLATZ: NO, no, Your Honor!

JUDGE: I sentence you, for the balance of your natural life, not to hard labor, as you would desire, but to hard loafing. (Rising and lifting his hand portentously.) I sentence you to pass the remainder of your days at Palm Beach, Florida.

BLATZ: (Stands.) The chair! The chair! Give me the chair!

ALL, IN UNISON: Sit down, Blatz.

[CURTAIN]