The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-08-22
A "CHURCH TOWN"
FURNISHES
Model Pennsylvania Community
Tears Negro From Hospital
and Burns Him Alive
THE FAILURE OF RELIGION
Preachers Away on Their Vacations, When Mob In
vents New Form of Sabbath Observance-The
Deeper Meanings of the Crime-The Mob
in Pennsylvania Was Worse Than
the Chinese Boxers
b HI DELICIOUS RAMBIER1
(BY THE RELIGIOUS RAMBLER.)

C~oatesville, Pa, Aug. 19.-The reli-
gious aspect of tae lynching which
took place here last Sunday leads an
observer to startling questionings. This
is a famous church town, and some OF
its citizens are known nationally as
leaders in religious work. The Bible
classes for men are a COateSVllle pride.
Apart from the foreign and negro pop
ulation, who had no part whatever in
the lynching, this is an unusually
quiet. prosperous and churdn-going
community, and it still bears marked
traces of its Quaker origin.
But here, with none of the usual
incentives to mob violence. and with
the race issue absent except insofar as
the defeat of Jeffries by a negro pu-
gilist has aroused the young men
whose chief interest is sport, a MOB
of from three to five thousand persons
perpetrated one of the worst ~lynchIngs
recorded on his lark page Of Ameri-
can history. A hospital was ralded, a.
wounded man was dragged over half
a mile of rough roads, a piece of iron
cot clanking from his manacled feet
the while, thrown upo a great fire,
and when he crawled off the blaze, his
body was hurled back again three
times with incredible brutalities. The
last time the poor wretch, frenzied
with pain, his flesh hanging in shreds,
craWled off the pyre. he was prodded
and beaten back with fence rails until
unconscious.
Worse Than the Boxers.
The worst that the Chinese Boxers
did to the missionaries in 1900 was hui
name as compared with what these
homegrown young Americans did on
a peaceful Sunday evening in a coun-
try settled by William Penn.
IT was not the foreign population OF
Coatesville, nor yet the negroes, that
created this riot The crime was con-
coc1ed in fire Of which the
policeman, Rice, whom the negro.
Walker, had killed in a scuffle, was a
popular member. Everybody seems to
had plenty of warning, for a crowd
numbering thousands, gathered during
more than an hour around the hos
pital at the edge Of the city where
the murderer, one eye shot out by a
bullet, which had plowed a cruel
wound through his head, lay chained
to a cot.
The front rank Of the lynchers were
young men. They were by no means
all hOOdlums, either: there is d1smay
in the ranks of the good people OF
Gainesville over tae possibility Of some
prominent young mems going to Jail.
Automobiles, which are not commonly
owned by the laborerS from the iron
mills, skirted the crowd that watched
the burning.
A simple process Of arithmetic re-
veals the fact that since Coatesvilles
white American population numbers
about 5000, n the attendance upon
the seven churches with their Sunday
Schools includes more than 1000
persons, there must have been some
of the church people in that mob of
four or five thousand lynchers. In
fact l quickly discovered individuals,
known for their religious utilization,
who had witnessed the lynching.
Which, added to the admitted re-
SponSibility of the churches for a
community's moral tone, puts this
crime pretty squarely up to organized
religion.
Exit the DecalOgue.
The paganS to whom foreign mis-
~sionaries are sent. myriads of whom
will read Of CoatesYille's shame in the
newspapers of Asia, will not be slow
TO lndlct Christian civilization upon
such a showing as this. The ten COM
mandments, like all tbs Protestant
preachers of the town. were having a
vacation from Coatesv1lle last Sunday
In an unexpected test the restraints
or religiOn and of law and of Inherited
civilization fell down.
None Of the preachers came back
home in this crisis. An out-of-town
minister had to bury the dead police
man on Thursday. The Catholic
priest. Father Halohan, was in the
city. but he was absent from his resi-