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Of enemies, Director Hoover has plenty. They are not only men with guns in their hands and murder in their hearts. They are political lawyers who resent the Bureau's activities against their clients, frightened liberals who see in the Bureau the material for a U. S. Cheka, and others, not all of them outside the Department of Justice, who are jealous of Director Hoover's success and political immunity. These call him everything from a vain peacock to a vulgar gum-shoer. And to this sort of charge, Director Hoover has one reply:
Last year the Bureau obtained convictions in 94% of all cases it took to court. (For a local police force 35% is a good average.) It has solved 50 kidnapping cases since 1932. Last year, on an appropriation of $4,680,000 the Bureau returned $38,000,000 in Federal fines and recovered property. And since it entered the national bank robbery field, national bank robberies have declined from 16 per month to four per month.
*But the War Department still zealously guards the 4,000,000 fingerprints made of soldiers enlisting in 1917-19. *The underworld's previous name for Federal operatives was '"Whiskers," i. e. Uncle Sam.