Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [279]
Miller’s crime was what would be called in the trade, today, a Ponzi scheme. Carlo Ponzi, who gave his name to the scheme, was a swindler of the 1920s. He operated his scam out of Boston. He lured investors into his web with the promise of a 50 percent return on their money in three months; the scheme had to do (he said) with international postal exchange coupons, exchange rates, and other black boxes that were total mysteries to his gullible victims. At the end of three months, investors could either cash in or leave the money with Ponzi for further investment and profits. People flocked to Ponzi, as they had flocked to Miller; millions of dollars flowed into his pockets. Of course, like Miller, he paid “dividends” to early suckers with money raised from later suckers. And of course, as usual, the house of cards collapsed. Ponzi ended up in prison.6
Ponzi and his victims, too, were locked into a single system; they were all pursuing the same goal: quick money, easy money, bonanza money. This in itself was nothing new. There had been no shortage of schemes in the nineteenth century for getting rich quick—it was, after all, the century of land speculation, robber barons, and innumerable Wall Street frauds (none of these are extinct in the twentieth century). But there was also a standard picture of the way up the ladder of success. It was Ben Franklin’s way: hard work and patience, early to bed and early to rise, moderation, frugality, business acumen, self-discipline, and so on. There were few “bonanzas,” few ways to vast sudden wealth, and many long and successful careers to emulate.
The mobility that made these dreams into facts, and which also shaped the dreams, ended up by creating a new personality as well; and it is this personality that lies behind crimes of the self. In the twentieth century, particularly in the second half of the century, Ben Franklin had powerful competition. The new theme was a theme of quick, young, early, sensational success. Radio, TV, the movies, and popular magazines all promote the kingship of celebrities: sports heroes, movie stars, popular rock-and-roll singers, the gliterati of popular entertainment. Careers that fascinate the public are not the careers of nuclear physicists or CEOs or Wall Street lawyers; they are careers that rise and fall in a single glamorous trajectory, streaking like rockets across the sky. This is a trajectory, interestingly, that criminal careers also describe. In fact, one way to become an instant celebrity is to commit a vivid or daring or horrible crime. Mobsters and gangsters are themselves celebrities. A criminal career is a young man’s game. Crime also seems brief, youthful, glamorous, and exciting, thrilling to insiders and outsiders—and (so far) predominantly male.7
Probably nobody in the nineteenth century spoke about “role models”; this is a distinctly modem phrase. There were, of course, heroes, people one looked up to. They may have been members of the family, local notables, people one knew personally, religious leaders. Modem American culture, as we noted, makes idols out of sports heroes and rock stars—in any event, celebrities. In fact, baseball players or rock singers probably work like Trojans to achieve their success; and they have to start out with a certain amount of native talent. But in the end, it all looks rather effortless. It is, in any event, at least conceptually within the reach of the ordinary person, or so it seems. A kid from the slums can hardly conceive of what it takes to be a nuclear physicist, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, or the managing partner of a Wall Street firm. But if he could only shoot baskets a little better, or