The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-12
GRAVES HAS A CURE
SAYS CRIME MUST CEASE BE-
 FOR LYNOH1MQ.
Georgian Declares That the Hob is Justified in wreci<ing Summary
 Vengeance on Those Guilty of Assault.

Chautauqua. N. F., Aug. li.-Unique among all summer gatherings is the mob conference now in progress here The increase of mob spirit shown by feuds. lynchings. riots. assassinations and other lawless happenings gives great irn- portance to this conference.
 John Temple Graves of Atlanta, Ga, in his address on The Mob Spirit of the South" defended lynch law as a remedy for the crime of criminal assault, hold ing that though lynching is 2 crime, 1t is justified by the crime which provokea 1t. and will never be discontinued until the crime Is eliminated. The remedy for lyuching must be the elinilnation of the crime Of criEain4l aeszulk and sthia, he maintained. could be dons only bs the separation of the tive races in the United States
 ''The problem of the hour iS. not how to prevent lynching In the South, but the larger question:: How shall we destroy the crime which always has and always will provoke lynching?' The answer which the mob returns to this vital dues- tion Is already known. The mob an- swers 1t with the rope. the bullet and some times, God save us, with the torch. And the mob Is practical; its theory is effective to a large degree; the mob Is today the sternest, the strongest and the most effective restraint that the age holds for the conrol of the crime for which 1t is used"
 The Iyncher does not exterminate the race, Mir. Graves contended, but he holds him nightly in check.
 "As a sheer, cold, patent fact" he said. ''the mob stands today as the most poten- tial bulwark between the women of the South and such a carnival of crime as would infuriate the world and precipitate the annihilation' of the negro race"
 The masses of the negroes, he held. were not afraid of death coming in regular way. They love display and the spectacular elements of a trial and the spectacle appeal to their imaginations.
 Expediting the processes of the law would not be adequate to eliminate lynch- ing. The repeal of the amendments and the establishment of the negro's inferiori- ty in law and society, said Mir. Graves. though desirable. are not sufficient, flor the negro," he added, Ifs a thing of the senses and with this race and with all similar races the desire of the senses must be restrained by the terror. of the senses, if possible under the law"
 No influence of suppression so mighty and effective could be brought to bear as a law making amputation the penalty for the crime of rape. but this, like curfew edicts, separate laws for white and black or the treatment of the crime of rape as separate and outside of all other codes are but expedients, he maintained. There is no real remedy but one. No statute will permanently solve this problem. Reli- zion does not solve 1t; education compli- cates 1t. Politics complicates 1t. ''The truth which lies beyond and above all these temporizing expedients," he con- cluded, ''is that separation is the logical, the inevitable. the only solution of this great problem of the races" Discussing the subject of mental and moral contagion," Dr. J. M. Bukley of New York, after speaking at some length of the various transient and permanent changes that take place under different physical and material influences in hu- man personality. took up the question of crime and argued that all crime implied the existence of society and its attritions that sin and vice could be committed by person alone in the world, but not so crime. He showed the operation or this and how far through their natural causes epidemics might spread.
 Tn conclusion he declared that as laws of association bring on such general and | feverish criminal tendencies so the laws of association must be employed to antag- onize them.
 In the afternoon mob conference. John Temple Graves of Atlanta answered ques- tions. The North and South were about equally represented. MT. Graves's plan for the solution of the race troubles is State set aside for negroes and disfran- chisement outside of that territory. He proposed no general exodus. but a gradual emigration. He said the South would not object to the loss of the negroes, for it is learning the superiority of white labor.
 'Is mob execution he was asked, "a matter of economy to the South?" 1 NO" he replied, ''the South never
 weighs money in the matter of woman's honor
 Another question was: Are not the Southern mobs largely white trash, and men of murderous intent?"
 He answered: By no means. The
 mobs have included the highest in the land. officials and professional men," l. He declared that a white man would be lynched as quickly as a negro for an offense against a white woman's honor. He instanced in proof the only lynching in New Orleans in receat years.