The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-09-13
EDITORIAL
CRIME AND LYNCHING: ATTACKING THE
EFFECT BY ATTACKING THE CAUSES

nour1shes and %sustalns 1t. Having considered the
first method, let us now consider the second-that
of attacking lynching by attacking crime, it's
cause or excuse.
There are two ways of working to this end.
We should CD endeavor to put such safeguards
about those exposed to the crime as to make it's
commission less frequent, and CD endeavor to
destroy the spirit of savagery and backwardness
of which this offense is but one of many evil
dences.
The first consideration of those who seek direct
methods of preventing the crime is to provide bet
ter protection to residents of isolated country dis
tricts. 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 criminals chances of escape cor
respondently 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 en-
tire neighborhood Immediately on the alert"
But as yet these agencies are not widespread,
and for some years to come we must depend ON
other remedies. In the first place, the vagrancy
laws should be more strictly enforced, and the
public should be continually on guard against
the reckless, rowing 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,-mount- |
ed 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
1 shall not be surprised to find the idea generally
adopted by Southern Legislatures within the next
ten years.
And now we come to the deeper and profounder
problem,-that of dealing with the spirit back of
the crime, the spirit of degradation and animal
ism of which the rapist is the most horrible prod
uct. 1t is the old story of the white mans burden.
And we have the old message so often repeated by
the late DIR. j. /. M. Curry: "We must lift these
people up or they will drag us down."
Fraught with much meaning is the fact that the
CRIME against white women was practically I'M
known in slavery; that not one of the hundreds
of graduates who have gone out from Hampton
and Tuskegee has ever been guilty of if: and
that of those who commit this crime TODAY few
are able to read, have steady employment, or own
their 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 discin1ina If
steady labor is a wonderful restraint on the mas
s1ons' and the fact that women were not attacked
Dy even the lowest negroes in slavery must be-
chleny attributed to this. Of the negro prisoners
In 1890 (the 1900 census figures on crime - -
yet available), less than one-tentb had +rodo. -
less than two-ffths were able to road ond -