The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-12-05


 every lynchlng represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization, that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the commu- nifty all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part i'll the tortures of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the chil- dren who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trou- ble for the next generation of Ameri- cans.
 Let justice be both sure and swift; but let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of mob.
 There is another matter which mas Q direct bearing upon this matter of lynch ing and of the brutal crime which some times calls it forth and at other times merely furnishes the excuse for it's oX-' istence It is out of the question for our people as a whole permanently to lise by treading down any of their own num- , Der Even those who themselves for tho moment profit by such maltreatment of their fellows will in the long run also suffer. No more shortsighted policy can be imagined than, in the fancied interest of one class, to prevent the education Of another class. The free public school. the chance for each boy or girl to get good elementary education, lies at the foundation of our whole political situation. In every community the poorest eiti- zens, those who need the schools most, would be deprived of them if they only received school facilities proportioned to the taxes they paid. This is as true Of one portion of our country as Of an- other. It is as true for the negro as for the white man. The white man. if he IS wise, will decline to allow the negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and wo- manhood without education. unquestion- ably education such as Is obtained m our public schoels does not do everything to- wards making a man a good citizen; bue it does much. The lowest and most brutal criminals, those for instance who com init the crime of rape, are in the great majority men who have had either no education or very little; just as they are almost invariably men who own no prop erty; for the man who puts money by out of his earnings, like the man Nho acquires education. is usually lifted above mere brutal criminalty. Of course the best type of education for the colored man. taken as a whole, is such educa- ton as is conferred in schools like Hamp ton and TusKegee; where the boys and girls, the young men and young won- en, are trained industrlally as well as in the ordinary public school branches. The graduates of these schools turn out we'll in the great majority of cases. and hardly any of them become criminals, while what little criminality there is never takes the form of that brutal violence which invites lynch law. Every gradu- ate of these schools-and for the matter of that every other colored man or Wom- an-who leads life so useful and hon orable as to win the good will and re- spect of those whites whose neighbor he or she is thereby helps the whole colored race as it can be helped in no other way; for next to the negro himself the man who can do most to help the negro Is hIs white neighbor who lives near him. and our steady effort should be to bet ter the relations between the two. Great though the benefit of these schools has been to their colored pupils and to the colored people, it may well be questioned whether the benefits has not been at least as great to the white people among whom these colored pupils live after they graduate.
 Be it remembered, furthermore. that the individuals who, whether from folly, from evil temper. from greed for office, or in a spirit of mere base demasogy indulge in the infammatory and 'lcen- diary speeches and writings which tend to arouse mobs and to bring about lynch ing, not only thus eXicte the mob, but also tend by what crinlnologists call
 AFe lihood of a repetition of the very crime against which they are inveighing. When the mob is composed of the people Of one race and the man lynched is of another race the men who in their speeche5 and writings either excite or justify the ac- ton tend. of course, to excite a bitter race feeling and to cause the people of the opposite race to lose sight of the abominable act of the criminal himself: and in addition, by the prominence they give to the hideous deed they undohbted- ly tend to excite in other brutal and de- prayed natures thoughts Of committing st. Swift, relentless, and orderly punishment under the law is the only way by which criminalty of this type can permanently be suppressed.
 Capital and Labor.
 Tn dealing with both labor and capital with the questions affecting both cofpor- ations and trades unions. there .s ore matter more important to remember than aught else. and that is the infinite harm done by preachers of mere disconten'. These are the men who seek to excite violent class hatred against all men of wealth. They seek to turn wise and proper movements for the better control of cor s.fffts fa,o