as excusable, and will uncloak the inexcusable ones. For there are inexcusable, utterly inexcusable lynchings. The mob is not always actuated by fear of a guilty man's escape. Sometimes the ruling passion is only a savage, diabolical bloodthirstiness. Sometimes it is sheer and fiendish bullyism tormenting the weak and defenseless. Sometimes it is the mob leader's desire for personal vengeance, murderous hate doing its work in the name of justice. But these criminals find refuge in the same defense which shields those who are impelled by an honest (however mistaken) desire to protect the sanctity of their homes, — the inefficiency of the law. We must deprive them of this protection and expose them to the penalties they deserve. Remove the legal shortcomings that cause law-loving men to condone lynching, and the lawless can no longer practice it with impunity. Excepting possibly for the most heinous crimes and in communities where the white population is entirely outnumbered by negroes of the lowest type, lynching can then be made odious and punishable (as it should be). For our warfare on mob law will not be complete without a stringent, but flexible and enforcible anti-lynching law. First of all, the law must recognize the fact that the average lyncher, criminal as he is, does not deserve the punishment given for capital crime, and that to refuse to recognize lynching as anything but murder is equivalent to refusing to recognize it as a crime at all; for it cannot be punished as murder. There should be a wide range of penalties, beginning with a fine and brief imprisonment for the man who joins a mob, prompted only by a desire to punish crime, and ending with death for the possible enormity of using the mob to kill a personal enemy. If only a three months' term in jail stared every lyncher in the face, only the sternest sense of duty or the strongest of passions would cause men to take the law into their own hands. And not only should lynchers be punished, but all officers who tamely surrender prisoners to the fury of the mob ought to be severely dealt with. Finally, good men everywhere must preach in season and out of season the sanctity of law and the peril of lawlessness. We must excuse lynching under no conditions, for as certainly as a fire, fanned to a fury in one room, will sweep on to other rooms, so certainly will the mob, if generally encouraged to punish one crime, sweep irresistibly on to supplant the court at all points. Instead of excusing it where the crime is horrible and the guilt of the criminal undoubted, we must teach that in such cases mob law is the more indefensible- - because of the increased certainty and speed of legal punishment. It is not the criminal's rights, but the court's rights, that we need to emphasize. In his heart of hearts every man must say with the lynchers that the rapist is a brute who has forfeited all human rights. But the law that we have set up in God's name, and in the name of all the people, -this has the highest and noblest of rights, and it is the law's right to try the criminal, not the criminal's right to a lawful trial, that is violated whenever and wherever an irresponsible minority usurps the powers which the whole people have vested in our courts of justice. We need to teach that, if Satan himself should commit a crime, we should try him in legal form, — not for Satan's sake, but for the sake of law and order and civilization; not that he would have the right to a court trial, but that our courts alone would have the right to try him ; and that trial by any other body is, and will ever be, usurpation and minority rule, un-American, undemocratic, and unendurable. II. So much for the direct ways of attacking the mob spirit. With these improvements in our judicial system, I believe that lynching for any other crime than that against white women can be stopped within a reasonable period of time, and that lynching for this offense can be materially and steadily diminished. For this crime, however, the less intelligent classes will long regard the mob as the rightful executioner; and it is by this crime, and this only, that the lynching evil can be kept alive in the South. It is not without reason, therefore, that so much of this paper is devoted to a discussion of how to stop the offense which, under existing conditions, will continue to provoke outbreaks of mob violence, and which, even with a perfect law, would mightily stir the passions of the people. There are two ways of working to this end. We should (1) endeavor to put such safeguards about those exposed to the crime as to make its commission less frequent, and (2) endeavor to destroy the spirit of savagery and backwardness of which this offense is but one of many evidences. The first consideration of those who seek direct methods of preventing the crime is to provide better protection to residents of isolated country districts. Of course, the progress of civilization is itself contributing to the solution of this problem. As population becomes denser and the people get into closer touch with one another by means of good roads, the criminal's chances of escape correspondingly decrease, and crime dies. when the hope of escape dies. The rural telephone system, where it has been introduced, is also a notable deterrent, for, as a correspondent in another coun-ty has just reminded me, no sane man is likely to commit a heinous crime in a community where a network of wires makes it easy to put the entire neighborhood immediately on the alert." 66 and the public should be continually on guard against the reckless, roving element of blacks from which the criminal class is chiefly recruited. The rural districts should also have better police protection. A member of the Georgia Legislature last winter presented a bill for a rural police patrol, mounted patrolmen to guard country residents against tramps and criminals in much the same way that the "patty-rollers of the Uncle Remus stories guarded the people against vicious or runaway slaves. This bill of Mr. Blackburn's attracted much attention and much favorable comment, and I shall not be surprised to find the idea generally adopted by Southern Legislatures within the next ten years. Fraught with much meaning is the fact that the crime against white women was practically unknown in slavery; that not one of the hundreds of graduates who have gone out from Hampton and Tuskegee has ever been guilty of it; and that of those who commit this crime to-day few are able to read, have steady employment, or own homes. Ignorance, idleness, thriftlessness, out of these does crime come, and against these must our warfare be waged if we would destroy the spirit that breeds crime. The discipline of steady labor is a wonderful restraint on the passions, and the fact that women were not attacked by even the lowest negroes in slavery must be chiefly attributed to this. Of the negro prisoners in 1890 (the 1900 census figures on crime are not yet available), less than one tenth had trades, and less than two fifths were able to read and write. I look then to right industrial, educational, and religious training as our chief safeguard against negro crime. Only a few weeks ago a friend of the writer's reported this illustration: "Last year I spent some time on one of the islands off the Georgia coast where the negroes when emancipated were as depraved as anywhere in the South. They even offered libations to the moon. But into that mass of ignorant blacks two good teachers went, and set about uplifting the people, morally, industrially, intellectually. When I was there last summer the Southern lady with whom I stopped went with her young daughter on a night trip of five miles across the island, and without a thought of danger." But do the general, nation-wide results indicate that education is helpful? It has often been claimed that they do not. And in proof we have the oft-repeated charge that the percentage of literacy among negro criminals in 1890 was higher than that for the total negro population, in other words, that the literate negroes furnished a larger proportion of prisoners than the illiterate. This statement was made in an address before the National Prison Association in 1897. It was printed in one of our foremost magazines, the North AmeriIt was recan Review, in June, 1900. peated by a governor of Georgia in a public message. A Mississippi preacher has sent it broadcast over the South, and it was doubtless used in the recent campaign in that state. Scores of papers have copied it. Even now a Southern daily which I have just received has a two-column argument against negro education, based on the alleged census figures. "To school the negro," says the writer, "is to increase his criminality. Official statistics do not lie, and they tell us that the negroes who can read and write are more criminal than the illiterate. In New England, where they are best educated, they are four and a half times as criminal as in the Black Belt, where they are most ignorant. The more money for negro education, the more negro crime. This is the unmistakable showing of the United States Census." That such statements as these have thus far gone unchallenged should indeed excite our special wonder. It was only a desire to get the exact figures that led me to discover their falsity. The truth is, that of the negro prisoners in 1890 only 38.88 per cent were able to read and write, while of the total negro population 42.90 per cent were able to read and write.1 And in every division of the country save one (and that with only a handful of negro criminals) the prisons testified that the literate negroes were less lawless than the illiterate. To make the matter plain, the following figures have been prepared by the United States Bureau of Education. They show the number of criminals furnished by each 100,000 colored literates, and the number furnished by each 100,000 colored illiterates, according to the Census of 1890: CRIMINALS IN EACH 100,000. North Atlantic Division. Literates. Illiterates. 828. 320. 317. 807. 1174 426 498 820 542... 518 When we consider that there were only 258 negro prisoners in all the Western Division (out of the 24,277 in the Union), the mere accident that, of these few, seven more than the exact proportion came from the literate element loses all significance; the test is on a scale too small for general conclusions. Summing up, it appears that of our total colored population in 1890 each 100,000 illiterates furnished 489 criminals, and 1 See Compendium of Census, part iii. p. 300, and Bulletin on Crime, Pauperism and Benevolence, part i. p. 173. each 100,000 literates only 413 criminals. Even more striking testimony comes from the North Carolina State's Prison situated in the writer's own city. In the two years during which it has kept a record, the proportion of negro criminals from the illiterate class has been forty per cent larger than from the class which has had school training. It is plain, therefore, that even with the pitifully foolish and inefficient methods which have obtained heretofore, the schooling the negro has had has been helpful and not harmful. But we must adopt a wiser policy. Industrial education, as exemplified in Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, strikes directly at the evils which foster crime; and to breathe the spirit of these institutions into the general public school system of the race is the imperative and immediate duty of those who have the matter in charge. To delay in this means danger. It is the impotence and ineptness of the old systems that have brought people to doubt the wisdom of all negro education. A direct result is the triumph of Governor-elect Vardaman of Mississippi, on the platform, "No white taxes to teach negroes." But even if the negro's schools were not to be improved and rationalized, to adopt the Vardaman policy would be disastrous. It means either that we are to abandon the black man to animalism, and honeycomb the South with African savagery, or that we are to surrender his education to incensed leaders and fanatical theorists, and from their sowing of dragons' teeth we have had harvest enough. The present prevalence of negro crime is probably due in some measure to unwholesome notions of social equality and intermarriage that they have inculcated, — the natural, elemental passion to breed upward, to mate with a higher order, called forth in violent form. How much worse would be the condition if the teaching of millions of negro children were entirely surrendered to this class! We must abandon the errors in our educational work, but not the work itself. And not only must we use the schools to guide the young negroes into right paths, but to stay the spread of crime there must be greater coöperation between the religious leaders of the whites and the religious leaders of the blacks. The strongest religious denomination in the South will make a step in this direction at its next general convention. As a factor in actual life negro religion now counts for almost nothing, and the moral instruction of the young is prob ably inferior to that given by the slaveholders of the Upper South. Hysterical preaching is more popular than Biblical teaching. A typical illustration has just come to my notice. An intelligent, educated negro pastor had been laboring earnestly with his congregation, trying to raise their morals and give them worthier ideals. He went away for a week, and found on his return that he had been supplanted. An old-time "mourner" preacher, appealing only to the emotions, had captivated the membership by making everybody "happy." Writing of this problem in a recent Hampton Institute publication, Frances A. Kellor says: "The religious life of the negro to-day, with its mysticism, superstition, and excesses, in some cases predisposes to crime. It accentuates an excess of emotion, which condition is traced in many criminal cases." And yet we are sending missionaries thousands of miles to Africa while the Africa at our own doors goes neglected. The white people of the South should do their full duty in providing proper educational and religious training for the blacks, and then they should hold the negro leaders largely responsible for the moral condition of the race. one of the most thoughtful and conservative North Carolina editors has said: "The negro preachers, teachers, and leaders must be made to feel their As responsibility for negro crime. They should manufacture an anti-raping sentiment, and force it down through the several strata of their society until it touches bottom; then outrages would cease. They have not done it. Instead they have virtually encouraged the crime by denouncing only its punishment by the mob." So careful a journal as the Review of Reviews has commented on this indifference on the part of the colored leaders. "Why do they bother themselves so much about the lynching of negro criminals and so little about the hideousness of negro crime?" asks Dr. Shaw. "Here we have the most painful aspect of the whole problem." This condition, moreover, is reflected in the negro's general attitude toward law. Not a guardian protecting his rights, but an enemy restricting his freedom, has always been his conception of government. Lynching would be much less frequently resorted to, if the negroes, instead of concealing and shielding their criminals, would disown them and coöperate with the whites in the endeavor to punish them. But let us also deal honestly with ourselves. Let us see to it that we place no stumbling-block in the path of the weaker race. Here, for example, is a charge which comes, I believe, from Dr. H. B. Frissell, of Hampton Institute: "The way in which many respectable, intelligent colored girls are hounded by white men of the baser sort does much to create bitterness among the negroes, and leads them to palliate the crimes of their own race." If this condition exists in any degree whatever we ought, to free ourselves from the shame of it. The pressure of outraged public opinion should be strongly brought to bear on any white man who by any means encourages immorality among negro women. It is demoralizing. It is unworthy of our race. It reacts to our hurt. The bestiality of negro men is fostered by the unchastity of negro women. No form of racial amalgamation must find toleration among the whites. Here, too, is a charge by Professor W. H. Council, one of our best-known 66 negro educators: The negroes are brutalized, prepared for a career of crime, by low saloons and dens of vice, and these vice-factories owe their existence to white people. The blacks make no laws, they execute no laws. No judge or board of aldermen would allow the establishment of a saloon on the petition of negroes alone." In view of the earnestness with which we have sought to protect the Indian against the demoralizing effects of drink and vice, it is surprising that the phase of the matter to which Professor Council alludes has not had more attention. I would commend to other states the action of our last North Carolina Legislature in abolishing all saloons in rural districts. In a community in which the whites are in a minority, and without police protection, it is little less than suicidal to keep a bar-room to inflame the passions and derange the reasons of criminally disposed negroes. III. And the outlook what of it? I see no reason whatever for pessimism. The careful reader has probably anticipated this point, and has perceived that three notable forces are making against the progress of the mob spirit. 1. The delays, the technicalities, the solemn plausibilities of our legal machinery have done much to promote the evil. But now there are unmistakable signs of a public awakening. Reforms will fol low, and lynching will become less frequent as law becomes more effective. 2. The sudden translation of the negro from a state of slavery to that of freedom and political prestige engendered unnatural aspirations and unwholesome tendencies. With many, to avoid manual labor and to get social recognition among the whites became a ruling passion. But now the leaders of the race are |