Bisbee daily review., 1911-08-29
SAYS LYhCHING
 WAS \ MURDER
Editor of The Continent Goes to CoateSyiIle and Gets at Bottom of the
 Killing
S0RDlD POLITICS INVOLVED


 CHICAGO. Aug. 2S-Personal in vesugation by .William T. Ellis, editor afeld of The Continent, of the lynch ing of Zaehariah Walker in Coates vile, Pa, reveals the fact that the deed was murder. according to ad- Xance proofs of the article prepared by Mir. Ellis.
 ~ Mir. Ellis has visited the community where Walker, the negro, was burned to death for killing Edgar Rice, con- stable of that town. The mob was not melted by racial feeling and the lynch ing was due to failure of self gov ernment and lack ot respect for Amer ican laws, he says.
 H Talk Starts Eearly.
 Mir. Ellis's article, in part fellows The murdered policeman had been member of the Brandywine fire com pany and a local politician, having come within one vote of succeeding the present chief Of police The mem bers of the fire company began to talk lynching Sunday afternoon.
 The church bells had not rung for evening service before scores or hun , dreds Of persons knew that there Was plot about to lynch the negro. Not until Tuesday night was an arrest made, and then, apparently, because the opinion of the world was beginning to make itself felt ih |, Coatesyille.
 This will be bad for politics" was the first word Of the county officials at West Chester Politics of the petty. 4sordid and dirty kind that cures many rsmali American communities has fig 'ured in the case from the first It has stayed the arm of the Eocal off cials: it ran apparent through the gelatinOus statement which the gov ernor issued it mingled with the fear Of hurting business which closed the mouths of local merchants. The peO- pie Of Gainesville seem not to per .-eeive that in their case the expert ment of self-goyernment has failed utterly; and that by their unfitness for the obligations of citizenship they have besmirched the fame Of America in the eyes of the world
 No good citizen came out with an appeal to conscience. The preachers did not interrupt their playtime to re- turn to their focks, so sorely smitten by sin and shame. Coatesville mac . no voice, no vocal conscience. appar- . ently no sense of guilt. The only vigorous indignation 1 heard ex- pressed was at the newspapers for publishing long accounts of what the people euphemisticaIlt call this z thing. To let alone, and to allow 7 the thing to hlo'y over, is Coates yille's idea.
 Punishment unlikely.
 Unless the white light and heat Of a nations blazing indignation be go concentrated upon COatesville it is extremely improbable that any ade- ag QUate punishment will be meted out. As I heard more than once in the easy end untrue generalizing habit g of Americans. Everybody was fin it. And will present-day men, Of the aver. age sort convict themselves or their T kin-folk, or their neighhors2 Obvi- eOusly, the burgess should be impeach- ed, the entire police force dismissed, the Brandywine fire company abolished and its charter revoked, and the ne groes disarmed But even these appar- ent and easy measures Of justice will not be taken.
 Be it remembered, CoatesviIle is a representative American communi- tys Of even a higher type than ordi- nary That ominous fact is what makes this study of conditions worth the writing. l do not call at this re- spectabie, pRsperous, commonplace old Pennsylvania town: regard it merely as exhibit A in a study of American life.
 This was not race riot. Probably the murderer of Policeman Rice would not have been killed by a mob had he been a white man. suspect, though. that the principal item In the race feeling of the leaders of this crowd was the fact that a negro pugiI. ist had defeated the white champion. This fact bulks large in the text and pictures of the sporting extras and in the talk Of young men idling away their evenings on curbstones. The ne groes of Coatesville. although notori. Ously 'bad--1nd 'gun-tCters. showed self restraint when the mob spirit was abroad; there was never a symp- tom of rioting among them.
 'All the foregoing has been leading the investigation up to the door of the churches. Coatesville Is a mere than ordinarily religious town. Thai fact is written not in cynicism, but in sincerity.