"Not so far as I've heard," Abe said, "but even if the newspapers wouldn't of printed the information, Mawruss, why should Mayor Hylan assume that burglars don't write each other letters occasionally, or, anyhow, once in a while meet at lunch and talk over business matters?"
"Well, I've noticed that Mayor Hylan, Mayor Thompson, and a lot of other Mayors, Senators, and people which is all the time getting into the public eye in the same sense as cinders and small insects, Abe, always blames the newspapers for everything that goes wrong," Morris remarked, "because such people is always doing and saying things that when it gets into the newspaper sounds pretty rotten even to themselves, understand me, so therefore they begin to think that the newspaper is doing it deliberately, and consequently they get a grouch on against all newspapers."
"Sure, I know, Mawruss, but that don't excuse the police for not finding out who sent them bombs through the mails in the first place," Abe said. "It is now beginning to look, Mawruss, that the American police has begun to act philosophically about crooks, the way the American public has always done, and they shrug their shoulders and say, 'What are you going to do with a bunch of crooks like that?'"
"Well, in a way you can't blame the police for not catching them bomb-throwers, Abe," Morris said. "They've been so busy arresting people for violations of the automobile and traffic laws that they 'ain't hardly got time for nothing else, so you see what a pipe it is for criminals, Abe. All they have got to do is to keep out of automobiles and stick to street cars, and they can rob, murder, and explode bombs, and the police would never trouble them at all."
"But considering the number of people which gets arrested every day for things like having in their possession a bottle of schnapps, Mawruss, or smoking paper cigarettes in the second degree, or against the peace and dignity of the people of the State of Kansas or Virginia, and the statue in such case made and provided leaving a bottle of near-beer uncorked on the window-sill until it worked itself into a condition of being fermented or intoxicating liquor under section six sub-section (b) of the said act, y'understand, it is surprising to me that the police didn't by accident gather in anyhow one of them anarchists, Mawruss," Abe said, "because, after all, Mawruss, it can't be that only respectable people violate all them prohibition, anti-cigarette, and anti-speeding laws, and that, outside of dropping bombs, anarchists is otherwise law-abiding."
"At the same time, Abe, I couldn't help feeling sorry for a policeman who would arrest an anarchist by accident, especially if he didn't carry any accident insurance, because the only way to avoid accidents in arresting anarchists is to take a good aim at a safe distance, and let somebody else search the body for packages," Morris declared.
"To tell you the truth, Mawruss, I think the reason why them anarchists which explode bombs is never discovered, y'understand, ain't up to the police at all, but to the contractor which cleans up the scene of the explosion," Abe said. "If he would only instruct his workmen to sift the rubbish before they cart it away, they might anyhow find a collar-button or something, because next to windows, Mawruss, the most breakage caused by anarchistic bomb explosions is to anarchists."
"Still, there must be a lot of comparatively uninjured anarchists hanging around—anarchists with only a thumb or so missing which the police would be able to find if they really and truly used a little gumption, Abe," Morris said. "Also if they would keep their ears open, there must be lots of noises which now passes for gas-range trouble and which if investigated while the experimenter was still in the dancing and hand-flipping stage of agony, Abe, might bring to light some of the leading spirits in the chemical branch of the American anarchists. Then of course there is the other noises which sounds like gas-range troubles, and which on investigation proves to be speeches, Abe, and while it is probably true that you can't kill ideas by putting the people which owns up to them in jail, Abe, I for one am willing to take a chance and see how it comes out, because, after all, it ain't ideas which makes and explodes bombs, but the people which holds such ideas."
"Also, Mawruss," Abe said, "it is the people which holds such ideas that says you can't kill ideas by putting the people what holds them into jail, but just so soon as them people gets arrested, not only do they claim that they never held such ideas, but they deny that there even existed such ideas, and then the noise of the denials they are making is drowned out by the noise of the bombs which is being exploded according to the ideas they claim they don't hold, and that's the way it goes, Mawruss. The chances is that the mystery of who exploded them bombs will remain a mystery along with the mystery of how the Peace Treaty come into the possession of them New York interests in the form of a volume of three hundred and twenty pages, as Senator Lodge says it did."
"To me that ain't no mystery at all, Abe," Morris said. "The chances is that them New York interests, whatever they may be, Abe—and I got my suspicions, Abe—simply seen it in the Saturday edition of one of them New York papers which makes a specialty of book-advertising, an advertisement reading: