“IF YOU WANT TO GATHER
HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE
BEEHIVE”
On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New
York City had ever known had come to its climax. After
weeks of search, “Two Gun” Crowley - the killer, the
gunman who didn’t smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped
in his sweetheart’s apartment on West End Avenue.
One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid
siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in
the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the “cop
killer,” with teargas. Then they mounted their machine
guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an
hour one of New York’s fine residential areas reverberated
with the crack of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat of
machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over-
stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand
excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it
ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New
York.
When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner
E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado
was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered
in the history of New York. “He will kill,” said the
Commissioner, “at the drop of a feather.”
But how did “Two Gun” Crowley regard himself? We
know, because while the police were firing into his
apartment, he wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may
concern, ” And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his
wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter
Crowley said: “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a
kind one - one that would do nobody any harm.”
A short time before this, Crowley had been having a
necking party with his girl friend on a country road out
on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the
car and said: “Let me see your license.”
Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut
the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying
officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the
officer’s revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate
body. And that was the killer who said: “Under my
coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do
nobody any harm.’
Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he
arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, “This
is what I get for killing people”? No, he said: “This is
what I get for defending myself.”
The point of the story is this: “Two Gun” Crowley
didn’t blame himself for anything.
Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you
think so, listen to this:
“I have spent the best years of my life giving people
the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time,
and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”
That’s Al Capone speaking. Yes, America’s most notorious
Public Enemy- the most sinister gang leader who
ever shot up Chicago. Capone didn’t condemn himself.
He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor - an
unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.
And so did Dutch Schultz before he crumpled up
under gangster bullets in Newark. Dutch Schultz, one of
New York’s most notorious rats, said in a newspaper interview
that he was a public benefactor. And he believed
it.
I have had some interesting correspondence with
Lewis Lawes, who was warden of New York’s infamous
Sing Sing prison for many years, on this subject, and he
declared that “few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard
themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you
and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell
you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the
trigger finger. Most of them attempt by a form of reasoning,
fallacious or logical, to justify their antisocial acts
even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining
that they should never have been imprisoned at all.”
If Al Capone, “Two Gun” Crowley, Dutch Schultz,
and the desperate men and women behind prison walls
don’t blame themselves for anything - what about the
people with whom you and I come in contact?
John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his
name, once confessed: “I learned thirty years ago that it
is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my
own limitations without fretting over the fact that God
has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”
Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally
had to blunder through this old world for a third of a
century before it even began to dawn upon me that
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize
themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it
may be.
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive
and usually makes him strive to justify himself.
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s
precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and
arouses resentment.
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