The age-herald., 1901-09-05
THE ELMORE CASES.

From the Indianapolis Journal: Follow ing soon after the action of two or three Southern sheriffs in holding mobs at bay, 1t shows a healthy growth of public sem timent against lynching
 From the Pittsburg Chronicle-Tele- graph: This conviction is cheering news. It shows that there are spots in the South where people are beginning to think that it is a crime to hang a black man with out due process of law. Let the idea spread. It Is good one When white man can no longer indulge in the amuse- ment of hanging a black man on slight provocation without running the risk Of being deprived of their liberty. 1t is a sign that a wholesome respect for law is beginning to manifest itself.
 From the Boston Journal: All honor, we say, to the Alabama jury and the Alabama judge who have had the courage and good sense to convict lyncher of murder in the first degree, and to give him a life sentence for the crime. Let us hope that their example will be made a precedent. There Is no way to stop NN0 ~---~' Just as soon as intending lynchers un- derstand that they will be held individual ly accountable. and that righteous public sentiment will sustain the courts, there will be a swift subsistence In the lynch ing craze. Every lyncher is at heart an arrant coward, and the moose or the prison immediately in view will unnerve him.
 From the New York World: The third Alabama conviction for lynching, reported in the news today, is another of the null tiplying signs of an awakening public sentiment in the South to meet the rapid, the appalling growth of savagery gro- tesquely masked as swift justice. How necessary this awakening is, appears in the figures in the Worlds dispatch from Chicago. While lynching has not been contind to the South, Southern States are far in the lead in those disgraceful records of 31SO known lynchings in the past twenty years. And in the South are almost all the cases of lynching accom- panied by tortures such as were until re- gently supposed to be peculiar to bar barrie times and peoples.
 At last the best Southern people seem to be realizing that the show of the brute in brutal negroes is infinitely less peril ous than the release of the brute in civil ized communities The negro displays the brutality of the untamed savage. The communities that burn and torture and mutilate show the brutality of the degen- erating civilized man.
 af fhn ntyfh ic not the negro problem, but the problem of degenerate whites.
 From the New York Herald: An en- couraging aspect of the lynching epidemic in the South is the growing sentiment of condemnation 1t is evokng. Not only have Governors boldly called for the en- forcement of the law and judges charged grand juries to indict the offenders, but plucky sheriffs have faced the mob with heroic determination that has made rioters quail, and in one instance at least a lyncher has been convicted by a jury of murder in the first degree. In addf- ton to all this is the outspoken denun- citation of the barbarity by many papers There is not reputable journal in this section," says the Chattanooga Times that does not refer to these outbreaks of lawlessness in the language of reproof condemnation, denunciation.'
 When the sentiment of the community against lynchng and the determination of the authorities. from the Governor down to peace officers and jurors. to enforce the law become general the barbarious prac- tice will be doomed. There may be, and in fact are occasional riotous outbreaks in any and every community, however law-abiding or law respecting. But such outbreaks cannot occur with deplorabe frequency and be characterized by savage brutality wherever they are emphatically condemned by popular sentiment and promptly punished by criminal law. The awakening and spreading of Southern sentiment against the outrages is 8 prom ising sign for the South and to be hailed with satisfaction by the entire country.
 MONEY IN PEACHES.