Bisbee daily review., 1906-12-05

ofhcers of the law in hunting down with all possible earnestness and zeal every such infamous offender More over. in my judgment. the crime of rape should always be punished with
 death. as in the case with murder; assault with intent to commit rape should be made capital crime. at least in the discretion of the court
 and provision should be made by which the punishment may follow im- mediately upon the heels of the of
 fense: while the trial should be so conducted that the victim need not be wantonly shamed while giving tes-
 timony. and that the least possible publicity shall be given to the details.
 The members of the white race on the other hand should understand that every lynching represents by just so
 much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynch ing inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part In the torture of a hu-
 man being without having his own
 moral nature permanently lowered. Each lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it. and therefore just so much additional
 trouble for the next generation of Americans
 Let justice be both sure and swift: but let it be justice under the law. and not the wild and crooked savag- cry of mob.
 There is another matter which has 8 direct bearing upon this matter of lynching and of the brutal crime which sometimes calls 1t forth and at other times merely furnishes the ex- cuse for its existence. It is out of the question for our people as a whole permanently to rise by treading down any of their own number Even those who themselves for the moment profit by such maltreatment of their fellows will in the long run also suffer No more shortsighted policy can be inn agined 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 citizens. those who need the schools most. would be deprived of them if they only received school fa- cilities proportioned to the taxes they paid. This Is as true of one portion of our country as of another. It is ss true for the negro as for the white man. The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the negroes in
 mass to grow to manhood and woman hood without education. Unquestion- ably education such as is obtained in our public schools does not do every thing towards making a man a good citizen: but 1t does much. The lowest and most brutal criminals, those for instance who commit the crime of rape, are in the great majority men who have had either no education or very little; just as they are almost in- variably men who own no property: for the man who puts money by out of his earnings. like the man who &C., quires education. is usually lifted above mere brutal criminalty. Of course the best type of education for the colored man. taken as . whole. is such education as is conferred in schools like Hampton and Tuskegee: where the boys and girls. the young men and young women, are trained industrially as well as in the ordinary public school branches. The gradu- ates of these schools turn out well in the great majority of cases, and hard " any of them become criminals while what little criminality there is never takes the form Of that brutal violence which invites lynch law Ev- cry graduate of these schools-and for the matter of that every other colored man or woman-who leads a life so useful and honorable as to win the good will and respect of those whites whose neighbor he or she is, thereby helps the whole colored race as 1t 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 better the relations between the two. Great tho the benefit of these schools has been to their colored pup ills and to the colored people. it may well be questioned whether the bene- fit has not been at least as great to the white people among whom these | colored pupils live after they gradu- i ate.
 Be 1t remembered, furthermore, that the individuals who, whether from folly. from evil temper, from greed of office. or in spirit of mere base demagogy. indulge in the infiam- matory and incendiary speeches and writings which tend to arouse mobs and to bring about lynching. not only thus excite the mob, but also tend by what criminoiogists call suggestion. i greatly to increase the likelihood 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 an- other race. the men who in their speeches and writings either excite or justify the action tend. of course. to