George Woodward Wickersham (18581936), lawyer, public servant, attorney general of the United States, and chairman of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the only child of his father’s second marriage. Sadly, his mother died while giving birth to him and shortly thereafter his father died. That left the rearing of the boy to his maternal grandparents. In partnership, his grandfather founded what was to become the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. His father had been a Union colonel in the Civil War and an inventor for the iron and steel industry. From 1873 to 1875 George studied civil engineering at Lehigh University. Next, he was private secretary to upcoming Senator Matthew S. Quay and a student of law in the office of a prominent attorney. The latter occupation led to his enrollment in the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1879). The following year he graduated and was admitted to the bar. For two years he practiced law in Philadelphia before going to New York to join the firm of Strong and Cadwalader. An industrious young man, he was made a partner within four years. Except for his tenure as attorney general of the United States, he continued to resolve legal matters for Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft until his death.
As President William Howard Taft’s attorney general, Wickersham stringently enforced the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. From the start he commanded respect and engendered fear for his readiness to prosecute any corporation for attempting to monopolize an industry. Standard Oil, United States Steel, and International Harvester were some of the corporate giants he initiated suits against. With Taft’s defeat in 1912, he returned to private practice but kept a keen eye on state, national, and international affairs. Between 1912 and 1929 he served on the commission for the reorganization of New York’s state government, voiced enthusiasm for the Allied cause at the beginning of World War I when isolationism was the rule, and after the war pushed hard for ratification of the League of Nations, among other involvements.
At the age of seventy-one, a full career behind him, Wickersham, far from exhausted, accepted the chairmanship of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. President Herbert Hoover had assigned him to the post, and such was Wickersham’s dominance over the proceedings that the investigative body soon bore the public name of the ”Wickersham Commission.” Its charge was to propose methods of enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition of intoxicating liquors) and to inquire into the entire federal system of jurisprudence and the administration of laws in relation to the amendment.
The results were published in fourteen topic-length reports with an addendum, the Mooney-Billings report, submitted to the commission but not released by it. Of the reports, No. 11, Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement, and No. 14, Report on Police, were the most pertinent to everyday police activities. Report No. 11 warned against police use of ”third degree” treatment, ”the employment of methods which inflict suffering, physical or mental, upon a person, in order to obtain from that person information about a crime.” The commission regarded third degree as usurping the fundamental rights of personal liberty, bail, protection from assault and battery, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and access to legal counsel. A chapter each explored the general characteristics of third-degree harassment, arguments for and against it, and the types of unfairness experienced. Eleven recommendations followed, such as ”the establishment of a statutory minimum time for the preparation of the defense” and ”representation of the accused by counsel in all cases unless the penalty is very light or unless the accused has definitely refused counsel.”
Report No. 14 addressed the ”principal causes of the deficits in police administration that too generally leave the citizens helpless in the hands of the criminal class.” August Vollmer, professor of police administration at the University of Chicago, directed the research and wrote two of the chapters. Vollmer and his staff identified the vexations faced by the police executive and called attention to the problems besetting proper selection and training of police personnel. Moreover, they reviewed communication system and equipment needs, expanded the definition of crime prevention, and reasserted that police power belonged to the state. Ten conclusions accrued, from removing the corrupting influence of politics to creating state bureaus of criminal investigation.
The other reports were equally imperative. Report No. 1, Preliminary Report on Prohibition, stated that there were major difficulties to enforcement of the law, but foreseeable solutions. Report No. 2, Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States, opposed repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in the belief that enforcement of it was possible with revisions to the law. Wickersham wrote ”The older generation very largely has forgotten and the younger never knew the evils of the saloon and the corroding influence upon politics, both local and national, of the organized liquor interests.” Report No. 3, Report on Criminal Statistics, found a dearth of accurate data on crime; court-proceeding figures were all that was available. Report No. 4, Report on Prosecution, emphasized the ”tremendous complexity” of ever learning the causes of crime and of administering criminal justice. Report No. 5, Report on the Enforcement of the Deportation Laws of the United States, sought to protect those unjustly deported while facilitating deportation of ”aliens of the criminal classes” through revision of the laws.
Report No. 6, Report on the Child Offender in the Federal System of Justice, insisted that childhood deserves a status distinct from that of the adult. It recommended that persons under eighteen years of age should be tried in juvenile court, though for some child offenders transfer to adult court would be acceptable. Report No. 7, Progress Report on the Study of the Federal Courts, studied overcrowding in the federal courts, in particular the criminal caseloads in Connecticut. Report No. 8, Report on Criminal Procedure, focused on selection of judges and urged court reform to ease the burden on police. Report No. 9, Report on Penal Institutions, Probation and Parole, found that American penal institutions failed to rehabilitate inmates and, even worse, instituted a ”deadening routine” that only aggravated the situation. Probation should be continued because it costs less than imprisonment, and parole, in the form of indeterminate sentencing, likewise should remain, given that every chance for successful adjustment of the inmate to society is available. Report No. 10, Report on Crime and the Foreign Born, showed no evidence that the foreign born commit any more crime than the native born. It held that placing blame on the foreign born for increased crime is an excuse for blindness to crime inducements in a complex society.
Report No. 12, Report on the Cost of Crime, suggested that cities reallocated their criminal justice expenditures to offset economic loss due to criminal acts. Expenditures, it said, should be at a level to ensure maximum safety to citizens and property. Report No. 13, Reports on the Causes of Crime, 2 vols., demonstrated that ”crime fluctuates,” not only in aggregate but for each type of offense. One remedy suggested was ”security of employment.” Verifiable, though, is that juveniles living in disorganized areas of a city often follow a natural process of development toward delinquency. The addendum, Report on Mooney-Billings, recounted the trial of Mooney and Billings, who were accused of planting a bomb in San Francisco at the site of the Preparedness Day Parade in 1916. The explosion killed nine people and injured at least forty others. At issue was the alleged railroading of the two defendants by police, the court, and public opinion.
After producing 4,023 pages totaling 1.6 million words, the Wickersham Commission (1929-1931) disbanded. For all of its consummate work, its findings went largely unheeded because of the Prohibition question. At first the rowdy debate staged by ”wets” and ”dries” prompted the commission to oppose repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Then, with hard evidence that enforcement of prohibition was futile, the commission reversed its opinion. Thus Reports No. 1 and 2 eclipsed the urgency of the remaining reports, those concerned with long-standing maladies. Nevertheless, the commission had done its job: to make known to the public that America’s criminal justice system was flawed and in need of repair. It was not Wickersham’s fault that the rage over booze subverted his clear message. Given hindsight, Herbert Hoover wrote about the Wickersham Commission in his memoirs: ”Therefore, its investigations failed to prove of any great use so far as Prohibition was concerned, although it made recommendations for other legal reforms that were of lasting value.” But police executives from across the country were not so kind; in the New York Times for August 2, 1931, a number of them rebutted the commission and a consensus of observers termed the whole investigation hasty. Too much obsolete data had been taken to heart. At the annual convention of the Religious Education Association held at Columbia University, May 3, 1932, Wickersham lamented the flagging interest in his reports. He closed by saying, ”Lastly, we should remember that men will respect law only when law is respectable and that the method ofadministering justice is often more important than justice itself.”
Wickersham was known for his ”peppery treatment” and Spartan lifestyle. Multilingual, he read Dante in Italian and studied opera, collected French engravings, and excelled at photography.
His marriage to Mildred Wendell in 1883 produced four children. A heart attack claimed his life and he was buried in Rock-side Cemetery, Englewood, New Jersey.
