Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1903-02-05
NUMBER 27

medium of communication in the case,
whatever may have been the circum-
stances of the acknowledged attempt to
secure Mr.. Lesslers support of the tor
pedo boat proposition 1t may be extreme
ly difficult to establish the exact facts.
Unsavory and unpleasant and as un-
promising as the case is in it's present
condition. 1t demands the most thorough
investigation. and public opinion requires
that all who may be proved guilty of any
crime whether perjury or attempted brib-
cry or subornation of perjury. be fully
punished.
Good Sense-Good Advice.
The other night at some sort Of ne
gro meeting in Washington Virginia
negro aroused his auditors to great en-
thusiasm and vociferous applause when
in discussing the Acknowledgement of
negroes in the southern states he adj
vocated resort to the sword and the
torch in order to obtain redress. What
he really needed was ducking in the
icy waters of the Potomac to reduce
his temperature. Commenting on his
incendiary harangue, the Washington
Star, a stanch Republican organ, edito-
rally utters this good sense and gives
the negroes this good advice. The Star
says:
The speaker who at last nights local
mass meeting of negroes suggested that
the colored race must resort to the sword
and torch to avenge their wrongs in the
south if the present political oppression
does not cease does his people more harm
than can easily be repaired. Such in
cendiarism of sentiment, even If uttered
figuratively, appeals to the lowest pas
sions of the race and stimulates the very
impulses for free indulgence in which by
individuals the colored people in some
parts of the south are today suffering.
The race problem must be solved in wis
dom, not in passion, by peaceful, not war
like, means. 1t must be discussed in tenn
perate terms, not in violent hyperbole.
Adjustment will come out of the present
difficulties, just as it has come in tho
past out of even more serious problems,
but it will come the slower for such
speeches. however promptly wiser leaders
arise to denounce them. The anarchist is
an enemy to society, whatever his color,
but the negro anarchist who breaches
the doctrine of fire and blood is an enemy
more especially to the very people in
whose name he declaims Last nights
meeting was not of nature, outside of a
small portion of this one speech, to arouse
a passionate view of the case. The five
minute speeches were all of a wisely con-
servative character, calculated to allay
the radical sentiments stimulated by the
firebrand utterances, but unfortunately
such radicalis1n is made to color the whole
occasion in the public view and creates
an erroneous impression of the aims and
purposes of the negro's safest leaders.
There is need of extreme care in the
premises inasmuch as the least suggestion
of race warfare is certain to arouse deep
prejudice and hot passion on the part of
the negro's critics.
An lndefatigabIe Statesman.
Hon. John Wesley Gaines of the Her
mitage district in Tennessee evidently
believes that constant dropping will
wear the hardest stone. He never let's
up on the criminal coal barons who
have brought so much suffering on the
people, especially the poor, this winter.
He wallops them perpetually, swats
them at the most unexpected times
and when they are least expecting it.
No matter on what subject he spoke
in the Roman senate, Cato always
wound up his speech with, Carthage
delenda est" Carthage must be destroy
ed). So, no matter what subject is be-
ing debated in the house, Brother
Gaines manages to give the coal barons
whack.