Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1899-12-15
Beginning at the End.

II Will lie remembered that Ida B.
Wells, colorcd woman OF some
notoricty, made tonr OF this country
and England, several years ago, in the
interest Il The National Anti-Lynch-
ing League, OF which body she was
then the presiding officer. The i'm
mediate incentive to her European
tour was the burning ut the stake OF a
negro in Texas, convicted of the crime
of as>aulting and cruelty numbering a
defenseless white woman. Now the
terrible tragedy enacted at Maysville,
in Kentucky, the burning of the negro
Dick Coleman at the stake, has
aroused anew the Indignation and
cloquence OF the oblique-cyed Ida, and
she is out on another campaign OF re-
formatory effort. She is raising
heaven and earth to put a stop to Il
rampant evil which will never be
obliterated until she begins at the
right end OF her work, namely, the re-
moyal of the producing cause of the
great evil she so bitterly deplores.
The Ida Wells Woman's Club, of
Chicago, an institution, brought into
existence by Mrs. Wells and of which
she is the leading spirit, held an en-
loo
series of sweeping old-style, thread
bare resolutions" A copy of these
resolutions was sent to the National
Anti-Lynching League as basis of
operations tending towards a widely
extended crusade against the crime OF
negro lynching in the United States.
Denunciatory protests were sent to
the Governor of Kentucky and the
Mayor OF Mayesville.
1t would be much mo re consistent
if Mrs. Wells and her Jealous ad.
herents would make tonrs and hold
mass meetings among the colored peo-
pie of the south, devoting their elo-
quence and money accumulations
solely to the education and moral i'm
provement of their race in those be.
nighted districts.
So long as human nature remains as
it now is, just so long will the law of
retaliation remain unrepealed, and the
sooner the negroes of the south rea-
lie this fact the better it will be for
them. I-ynchings and burnings at
the stake will continue till the last
hideous monster is hunted down and
put off the face of the earth. And
New York set the pace for different
latitude, few months ago, in burning
black-skinned fiend who had de.
bauched woman. When cruel muir
der is added to crime of unutterable
atrocity, all sentimentality is para.
LIKED and the faculty of invention is
taxed to its utmost to devise means
OF punishment commensurate with the
crime committed,
One correspondent estimates that
three thousand men, women and
children made up the rank and file of
the mob that lynched Dick Coleman
at Mayesville. Why, it was simply
massing of the populace; city was
moved with the maddened infatuation
OF an avenging frenzy to remove from
their sight as soon as possible a being
unfit to longer live. And yet, in the
face of these salient facts, Governor
Bradley comes out in a proclamation
declaring that the lynchers shall be
punished. His simple performance of
an official duty in making such a
declaration, will, Of course. be the be-
ginning and end of the whole matter.
The husband and brother of the muir
dered woman struck the first matches
to light the fire, and hundreds of their
friends and neighbors turned out un.
masked to assist in carrying out the
a. terrible ordeal.
Ida Wells may flood the country
with hissing-hot resolutions; her
army OF colored ministers may preach
and pray till they are hoarse; anti
lynching leagues may compass the
earth, but the law of physical retalia-
ton for atrocions crime will remain in
all its integrity. The negro ravisher
will he put out of existence as soon as
a hempen rope, powder and ball, or
cracking flames can do the righteous
work.
Old Dan Sickles declared in open
court, at Washington, that he shot
Key, the seducer of his wife because
his victim and himself "could not
live upon the same planet" So it
always has been and ever will be with
the hidcous negro ravisher and MUIR
derer of white women.
onoNNih6 40 ehCoc 1hiuSS are, tucy
are getting to he a matter of common
course in human events and their har-
rowing details seem to have only
transient effect upon the public mind.
The typical, untutored, negro of the
south must be either exterminated or
his moral makeup radically recon-
structed before we hear the last of
lynchings and stake-burnings.
TERRIFIC gales have been reported
upon the great lakes this week. The
wind blew q fifty-mile record on Lake
Erie. very few vessels venturing out.
and those out speedily sought q place