The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1915-08-26
THE JEFFERSONIAN

every step. There opposition. The Mari
eta Chief of Police knew nothing afterward of a
crime his neighbors knew all about beforehand
In more than zoo miles of open road no one ques-
toned the lynchers' procession. Atlanta does not
Know whether the party avoided the city or passed
through. In MilledgevilIe, though there had been
warning enough, nothing was done by thirty
armed men, behind walls that would have stood a
siege, to defend their charge.
Night yelled Georgia's contempt of law Dav
lighted it's odd ideas Of deeency. When the body
was "found"-Sherim and Coroner being conve-
niently absent-it remained hanging while Geor-
ga parents lifted little children up to gaze over
the heads of the throng at spectacle they can
never forget, festival of gutted vengeance be-
cut off for souvenirs AS fitting final touch,
the corpse was stamped upon by blood-mad
ruffians.
The mob did not take the law into their own
hands" They tramp1ed on the law. They lynched
the honor of State. In the dark prospect that
faces the State there is CLEAN of light. 1t is
the declaration of the gallant ex-Gov. Saton that
every man concerned in IAN act contrary to the
civilization of Georgia should be hanged for he is
an assassin" 1t is tue pledge of Gov. Harris to
use all his power to "see to it that the members
Of this mob receive fitting punishment
This is the word for future action. The law
abiding men of Georgia may be expected to dis
avow to denounce, to condemn this crime against
their State But the only disavowal that will
carry weight with the Nation will be the punish
ment of the men who murdered Leo Frank.
Chicago, being as free from vice and crime
as New York, cannot afford to be outdone
by New York in denouncing mob-ruled
Georgia; SO they go little further in the
Chicago Tribune, and give us a remedy for
improving our present state of senli-civiliza-
ton.
Says the Tribune: $50 - *->~.f~ I
The South is backward. 1t shames the United
States by illiteracy and incompetence. It's hill
and poor whites it's masses of feared and
it's rotten industrial conditions, and it's rotten
social ideas exist in circumstances which dis
grace the United States in the thought Of Ameri-
cans and in the opinion Of foreigners.
When the North exhibits demonstration of
violence against law by gutter rats of society,"
there is shame in the locality which was the scene
Of the exhibition. When the South exhibits it
there is defiance of opinion.
The South is barely half educated. Whatever
there is explicable in the murder of Leo M. Frank
is thus expainable. Leo NJ. Frank atom
In the American structure. He might have died,
unknown ignored, thousand deaths
agonizlng in preliminary torture and more cruel
in final execution and have had no effect, but the
spectacle of struggling human being, helpless
before fate as a mouse in the Of a cat, will
stagger American complacency.
The South is half educated. It is region of
illiteracy, batent seIf-righteousness cruelty and
violence. Until it is improved by the infusion of
better blood and better ideas it will remain re-
proach and danger to the American republic.
After which we quote from the following
most representative papers of the North,
East and West:
ssssszzgss4 q
New York Evening Post:
There is no need to put words to the rack in or
der to seek to express the full horror and shame
of the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia EVery-