The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-10-12
Have Almost Boundless sweep.

| treason mob law is to thelr homes and institutions, mobs would be well nigh im- possible
 Have Almost Boundless Sweep.
 Aside from tbis attack on government, the evils of the mob have almost bound less sweep in all the relations of life. Can any man, in the widest flight of the brain, picture Robert E. Lee or John B. Gordon, net matter what the charge against the criminal, joining a mob to break down a jail and taking a prisoner out to hang him? Why not? Because they are types of courage and homer, and justice and veneratlon for law, and all these cry out against such an act. No man who forms a part of the flood of passion and cowardice which storms a jail and murders a defenceless prisoner, is ever again the same moral being.
 Then and there a human tiger is born. He comes to despise the sanetity of human life. He is swift to the she'd ding of blood of IS neighbors, and sure to give loose reign to his passion when 1t turns upon one who is weak and help less. These he will always find. He Is an enemy of the youth of the land for he teaches them it is right to unbridle their worst passions and to trample down I those who are set over them. What is | the Influence of churches. schools, and l homes in teaching discipline and self l control, and glad submission by the /, young to parents and others in authority over lem. when the lawless and vicious are allowed, by example which gees un- punished to inspire the young with the feeling that the dagger and torch are weapons of justice and better means of training people aright than reason, courage and humanity?
 ttWhat strc n per Uou1d ba attracted fo a community which is either unwilling, or unable, t9 throttle such men and coun- sels2 What worthy man. if he can leave, will long remain. CT care to rear a fam fly in a community where outbursts of mob violence are frequent? What se- curity Is there for life or property, or that men may reap the rewards of labor, if the standard of the law which pro- teets them, Is to be only what the preju- dice, passion and cruelty Of the vicious and ignorant may chance to make 1t? The check Of the material and moral well fare of the community by reign of mob violence, Is far worse than eonf1agratlon CT pestlence people can rebuild their burned houses and refurnish devastated homes, but the generation which toler- ates mob violence bequeathes a never ending train of woe to the children who come after them.
 Hearts of Masses Are Right.
 '1 ne instincts of the great mass of the people are right. They abhor mob law. Yet the masses Of society seem never to realize how pressing is the duty to come cut in the open against mob principles, It's asettors and defenders until the mob actually comes to their doors. By si- | lenee and inaction. they allow a few men in every community to speak apparently | for the whole community, and thus ere- | ate what the vicious take to be public sentiment, which will excuse, if 1t does not justify, their atrocities whenever they cheese to commit them.
 | "The mass of men do not appreciate the necessity for the bold word spoken in l season. The community too often ex- ] poets the man who prints a newspaper to voice It's opinion ana scourge offenders, and then giving him nothing more than unspoken mental approval, leaves him ! alone to bear the brunt of opposition of the vicious and lawless We are all too prone, In the face of prejudice, to refrain from speaking our own thoughts aloud.
 Cannot Shut Our Eyes.
 "There is one phase of the mob rule which is sweeping over the country, to which we cannot shut our eyes. If si- lence would better 1t, we might be silent; but silence only helps to feed the evil and it Is the duty of all good men to speak against 1t. Leaving aside the crime against woman. the lawless punishment