land, but was also an internecine war between Americans themselves. The slavery storm arose before the charge of Tory ceased to be the acme of shame and hate, culminating in the Civil War. The white citizens of military age spent four years in its death grapple, with all its attendant confusion and demoralization. The very privileges of the thoughtless Americans have a tendency to beguile him into lynching. He makes the laws, he elects the judges, governors and sheriffs. He, in common with his neighbors, sits upon the jury. He is very sure that the whole machinery of government is his, and he is half suspicious that he is himself the government. What reason, therefore, in the case of well known or clearly proven criminals, is there why he and his neighbors may not dispense with the forms of procedure that they themselves have made, and with the services of judges, governors and sheriffs whom they have elected, and themselves dispense justice speedily and by direct rather than by indirect and circuitous methods? From the beginning the whole subject was in his hands. He could have made the law other than it is and just as he would. Since guilt is clear, why can he not, quoad hoc, dispense with these forms made by himself? Why can he not break down all forms and himself directly apply the law? While such logic is monstrous, the excited mob unconsciously accepts it and acts upon it, forgetting that such logic will destroy all law and lead to anarchy and certain ruin. Lynching is also encouraged by the prevalent political heresies-let the people have what they want, let the majority rule, "vox populi vox Dei." With their nauseating With their nauseating nostrums the shyster and demagogue have poisoned an incredible number of the honest but unthinking. The mob readily persuades itself that it is the people and that it is entitled to its way. It is for the time the majority, at least in temporary power and brute force, and it is entitled to rule. It imagines itself to be the voice of the peo ple, and hence its voice is the voice of God. The legal faddist and reformer have done more than their share in keeping alive and strengthening the mob spirit generally, and the lynching spirit especially. The foundations of the temple cannot be undermined and at the same time the temple itself be preserved in its full strength and beauty. No more can constitutions and the eternal, universal foundations of the law be assailed and discounted without marring their beauty and grace, without lessening their grasp upon the will and obedience of the people, and without weakening their loins and shortening their arms. Just so far as the legal iconoclasts have, by their chatter and scribbling, reached and misled the thoughtless and unwary, just so far have dutiful respect and docile obedience to the law been shattered; just so far has the mob been strengthened and emboldened; just so far has the jurisdiction of Judge Lynch been enlarged. If the Constitution were builded upon an insecure foundation and false legal architectural lines, or if it could not stand the strain or attrition of government in action, why should it further appeal to the imagination or reason of the people? Why should it further withhold their hands or restrain their wills? In statecraft as well as in commerce, sailors will not knowingly continue service in a rotten ship. If the fundamentals were vagaries, founded on injustice and unrighteousness, for the purpose of protecting the strong and oppressing the weak, to secure the continued reign of one class and the service of another, then the whole superstructure, by the combined efforts of both classes, ought to be destroyed, by the one in shame and by the other in hate; and that, too, although in its place, for the time being, the mob may make the law and Judge Lynch execute it. If the Constitution ought to be suddenly changed whenever and wherever it restrains an impatient, excited and impassioned majority, could such a barrier ever stand between the majority and its purpose? How could it ever shield the helpless minority? Why should not the majority go straight to its purpose, without any intervening halts or barriers? Why is not every step taken between the birth of its purpose and its realization but so much useless lost motion? If the judgments of the courts are so devoid of inherent strength and sacredness that they may be rightfully recalled by the will of the majority, then why trouble the courts to give birth to so many sickly, spineless things? If the judgment of the majority is the ultima thule, why the time and trouble expended in formal, useless lawsuits? Why not at once the imperial will of the mob rule? Why any appeal to Pilate? Why not let the cry, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" be the beginning and Mount Calvary the end? was too impatient or too inflamed to await the orderly procedure of courts, no matter what the crime-Indian depredations, murder, arson, slave conspiracy or insurrection, incitement of slaves, concealing of slaves, slave stealing, cattle stealing, robbery, gambling-there Judge Lynch's court was organized and his procedure enforced. But be it said in fairness to all, that previous to the evil influences just before and after the Civil War, rape was rarely committed and practically never by the negroes upon the whites. Even during that war, when those influences were accentuated by arms, rape practically disappeared in the South. Criminal repetition or criminal brutality are the sine qua non of even public approval of lynch law. In the absence of these, lynch law cannot survive even in com cul-munities where the public conscience is at the lowest level. Prior to the Reconstruction era most negro crimes were petty; the crime of rape was infrequent and was unaccompanied by racial hate and revenge. Public passion had not then become so inflamed that it overlooked, if it did not approve, mob law as a necessary remedy. No faddist or reformer wishes the mination of such a calamity; but they forget, in their wild zeal and frenzy, that when they destroy every beacon and compass of the past, there are left nothing but the storm and the night. Neither in the past nor now does the jurisdiction of Judge Lynch extend only to rape cases. As might be expected, the Indians were the first victims in America. Prior to the Civil War, summary execution of negroes was quite unusual. Judge Lynch's victims were, for the most part, white men. The negro was scarcely ever lynched except in cases of conspiracy or insurrection. Until 1850 negroes, even when they killed their masters, mistresses or overseers, were turned over to the law. Hanging by vigilance committees in California and other western states for crimes against life and property and for political corruption was, in early days, too common to excite comment. It is, therefore, not to be gainsaid that originally rape had little influence in establishing lynch courts and enforcing lynch law. Always, whenever and wherever the public peace and safety were supposed to be threatened by crime, and public opinion Reconstruction, with its carpetbaggers, its scalawags, and its horde of pious, misguided troublemakers, wrought, at least in the South, a swift and disastrous change. They at once, as a means to their various ends, destroyed the negro's confidence in and reliance on his old master. They influenced the ignorant negro with dreams of social equality and intermarriage with the whites; they impregnated his very soul with the doctrine that he was the equal of any white man, socially, mentally and morally, and that he had but to assert himself to become his superior and his master. They robbed him of his every stay, his every comfort and hope; and they gave him instead an imagination diseased and distorted, and developed in him a malignant hatred for the only friend he had ever had, and, if experience is of any value, the only real, genuine friend he is, in the near fu ing spirit in the South. That it is not the ture, likely to have. They found him simple, trusting, polite, goodnatured and hope-sole cause is readily admitted, and that even ful; they bereft him, so far as they were. able, of all these simple, lovable qualities and, in their stead, gave him unrest, suspicion, hate, a diseased and inflamed ego, an ill-balanced ambition to strut and bluster in place and station for which he had no aptitude by mental or moral equipment or by tradition or training. They found him journeying through life in calm and in happiness and content; they destroyed his chart and compass and committed him to darkness and storm. The inevitable happened. Millions of lately freed negroes broke loose from all their old moorings. Labor was a synonym for slavery, and they loafed. Freedom involved full liberty of speech, and they preached. They had accumulated for him what the white man had, and from him they took freely when and where they could. He was the equal of any white woman, and if she would not willingly join with him in wedlock, why should he not gratify his lust, even if it did require mutilation and murder? To him liberty meant license, and there swept over the South a wave of chaos and crime that is still today a nightmare to those who lived through it and beyond the comprehension of those who did not.. There seems to have been no effort to keep a complete record prior to 1885, but from sources obtainable, from 1850 to 1860 in the whole country, for rape on white women, three negroes were legally executed and four were burned at the stake; during 1866, 1867 and 1868, three negroes were lynched for rape and four legally executed; while in 1873, 1874, and 1875, twenty-six negroes were lynched for rape and four for attempted rape, and six were legally executed. Taking the period from 1885 to the present time, it is admitted by the negroes themselves that about one-fourth of the lynchings of negroes were for rape on white women, and this is taken as proof positive that it is the raping of white women by negroes that keeps alive the lynch rape does not justify it is not open to dispute; but it cannot be fairly disputed that the frequent fiendish raping of white women by negroes does, as nothing else does or can, nourish and foster lynching and gives it whatever apparent approbation it enjoys. The admission that one-fourth of all the lynchings is for rape is fatal to the contention that it is inherent viciousness of the mob, and not the raping of white women, that explains the Southern mob. No man with blood in his veins can, in the quiet of an unprotected rural community, stand in the presence of the ravished, mutilated and murdered body of an innocent, simple child of the people, see the pitiful evidence of her struggle for self-defense, and hear the wild wail of shame and grief from her kindred and friends, and at the same time, holding his primitive impulses in leash, preach of "righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come." Under such surroundings the great Apostle to the Gentiles, after his conversion, might have done so, but there are few Americans of 1921 who have the self-control or the Divine grace to quiet the call of the wild and, in the interest of social peace and quiet calmly uphold the majesty of the law. The ordinary American, no matter where his abode, would most likely forget God and curse the law. Without a final settlement of the dispute as to whether rape initiated and sustains the present deplorable lynching situation. one thing is sure-it has not in the past, nor will it be in the future, restricted to rape. Every lynching, no matter what the cause, loosens public restraint and leaves the public conscience seared. Law violation does not stop with the infraction of one law, no matter how unpopular or unwise the broken law. When Judge Lvrch's court is once called into existence, there is no hope that his jurisdiction will or can be restricted. It will execute today for rape or murder; tomorrow for theft or burglary. Today the lynchers, no matter how unwisely, may have in mind the good order, peace and safety of society; tomorrow, infected by evil example, they may be the ignorant, the irresponsible and the evil-disposed, with no thought of punishing crime and assuring the public safety and order, but bent solely upon promoting their own evil designs or gratifying personal revenge. Just as the waters of a great reservoir will, when loosened, engulf and destroy the whole valley below, so will the pent-up mob spirit of the multitude, when unloosened and unrestrained, engulf and destroy the whole social fabric. The mob spirit is the very antithesis of order, peace and safety. Lynching has endured, but it has never met the approbation of the intelligent, thinking people of the South. But the horror of the negro rapist, the dread and danger of him, which for a generation have alarmed and disquieted every unprotected rural district in the South, has stunned them into inaction or appalled them into action, against their own hearts and consciences. Let this one dark terror end; free the women of the South from this everdreaded monster, then lynchings for all other crimes will shrink from view like some evil spirit of the night. The public opinion that is at least supine, if not indulgent, will rise in its might and purge the South of its evil lynching report. can It is useless to suggest that there inheres in the law some potent charm that move the negro rapist or frighten him into obedience. In a vague way he knows that the law stands between him and his passion, but it is too calm in its procedure. It will punish him for his crime, but the judgment of the law does not equal that of Judge Lynch in striking terror to his soul. To the complaint of the negro against lynching the white man has, often in effect, and at times in words, said: "Stop raping our women and we will stop lynching your rapists." To the lay, undisciplined mind this is a fair proposition, and when not accepted by the negro, the white man is prone to construe its non-acceptance as a declaration by the negro that he will not stop raping, but that the white man must stop lynching. Of course, if feasible, this would be a rough and ready solution of the problem, and it not at all follows that because the negro will not voluntarily stop raping, the white man is justified in the continuation of lynching Wrong ought to cease and that, too, without consideration. The crime of rape ought to stop, and the lynching nightmare must, in the interest of both races, stop. Not a few modern criminal reformers would readjust our criminal procedure to meet the mob's impatient thirst for revenge. They would take from the prisoner every safeguard now vouchsafed to him by the wise and persistent struggles of a hundred years. They would speed up the courts so that they might run a more even race with the mob. If such reformers had their way, a court, in the time of excitement and passion, presided over by a weak and pliant judge, and guided by a prosecuting officer ambitious for advancement and greedy for public favor, could be distinguished from Judge Lynch's court only by a competent expert. Our judicial system is not perfect, but lynchings cannot be attributed to that fact. Whatever the faults of our legal system, it is not responsible for lynch law. The mob lynches not by reason of any defect or delay in the law, but because the aroused passions of the mob want no law and will wait for no law, no matter how certain, no matter how swift. Lynching is not a protest against law, but is the outburst of primeval passion that ignores all law, waits on no court, and is satisfied with no punishment which it does not select and which it does not inflict. No legal sentence is severe enough, no legal execution brutal enough. The mob wants to rend and tear, mutilate and burn. It will not tolerate the sheriff as executioner. "Vengeance is mine," saith the mob, "and I will wreak it now in a whirlwind of passion and blood." The law is the child of civilization-the mob is the spirit of the jungle, and it will no more wait upon the law than would the jungle on civilization. The demagogue who excuses lynching or condones it under the pretense of defects in our legal system or the misuse of the pardoning power is a traitor to the state. And he is the arch-traitor of them all who, as the purchase price of its votes, corruptly deifies the mob as the savior of the state from courts which he claims are inefficient and from governors he charges are faithless. The mob spirit manifested in lynching is subversive of all law, of all peace and safety, but not more so than is the mob spirit wherever and whenever and however manifested. It has become the fad to arraign lynching as the anathema maranatha of mob violence. Such an arraignment is as far from the truth as most fads. Few agencies can be more destructive of social order and good government than the labor mob. It does not pretend to punish for violation of the criminal law, but destroys all property that obstructs its selfishends. It mutilates, maims and kills not only those who do not humbly bow to its bidding, but as well the innocent who happens to be within the radius of the conflict it has provoked. It bullies sheriffs, defies judges, ignores legislatures and congresses, and threatens governors and presidents. And all this not because of any crime committed or any public wrong done, but solely because others decline to contract with it on its own terms and because others wish to work when it will not. The physical havoc wrought by the labor mob is appalling. In the last decade millions of dollars in property have been destroyed by it needlessly, ruthlessly. Its victims, if accurately known, would far outnumber the unhappy victims of Judge Lynch. In a small area of one of the States not much larger than an ordinary county, the victims of the labor mob outnumber all of Judge Lynch's victims for a year past. The grand total of all the victims of all such mobs for any one year of the last dozen would surprise and alarm those who have not kept in touch with the labor troubles of the past decade. The lynching mob is ephemeral; is survives but a day. It is born in a whirlwind of passion, it wreaks its vengeance and is immediately dissolved and absorbed into the community from which it came. It does not live long enough to vote, to adopt constitutions, to pass by-laws, to develop a policy or formulate a creed. icy or formulate a creed. Each mob is independent and isolated; it does not harken back to past mobs or reach out in assistance to future mobs. It encourages other mobs only by its temporary but pernicious example. It is few in numbers; its area of operations small; its purposes fixed and limited. In the presence of armed forces, regular or militia, or a well-trained, determined constabulary, it slinks away in the darkness and dissolves in terror. Too often, the labor mob is born not as the result of a sudden gust of ungovernable passion, but of deliberation and preparation. Each mob is not an isolation, but a part of a fixed system, from which is drawn experience, courage and hope. It may, and often does, live long enough to vote and to exert its corrupting influence upon legislation and administration, to sanction the conduct and reaffirm the creeds of other such mobs, past and present, and by new schemes and devices to strengthen and secure the universal object of all such mobs. The members are too often not few, but include thousands; its area of operations not restricted, but too often includes a province. It is not always dissolved by the active presence of arms or constables, but, in defiance of both, continues, its work of destruction and murder. And when it does dissolve, it does not slink away in darkness or fear, but boldly, defiantly, boasting of its deeds, and with the promise of re-assemblage on its lips. No matter what may be said in explanation, nothing can be said in extenuation of |