The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-01-31
he Editor of The Age-Herald:

10 the EQlIOr or 1 ne ASe-f1eFdlu Your timely editorial in the issue of January 22, relative to "Lynchings in
 Georgia" deserves the attention of every thoughtful citizen During the year 1915
 there were 69 people lynched in the United States, 67 of which number were killed south of the Ohio. Of this number, G.,
 13 were white victims of the mob. Geor- gias share in this carnival of crimin-
 ality is practically one-fourth of the en-
 tire number killed by mobs, IS people
 having been murdered by mobs in Geor- gia during the year, being just twice the number of each of the next highest states, those of Alabama and Mississippi. Yet scarcely had the first month of the
 new year, 1916, fairly opened before Geor- gia mobs had slain Il other victims, more than half the number killed during all the year.
 Since the state itself was lynched by a | mob by the invasion of the penitentiary, it would seem that the life of no man is assured in Georgia. This derives em- phasis from the fact that the life of a chief executive was menaced because Of
 what? Because, for sooth, he acted with
 in the limits of his constitutional rights,
 and in compliance with his conscience, in
 committing the sentence of Leo Frank
 In other words, because the mob was not
 consulted the governor must be gotten
 out of the way.
 For long period of years this bloody
 work has been in progress in Georsla, and
 fl anyone has ever been in the least dis
 turbed, much more punished, for com
 plicity in mob vengeance, the public IS
 not aware of the fact. More than once
 the late Governor Northen, during his
 administration, sought to arrest the tide
 of mob violence, but popular sentiment
 was against him. On one occasion ne
 told the present writer that in defiance
 of his efforts mob sent to him piece
 cut from the body of a negro that had
 just been hanged. In other states mob
 outbreaks are confined, for the most part,
 to the rural regions. but in Georgia they
 are defiant and fragrant in the most pop ulous centers
 In the ordinary expression of regret for the prevalence of the mob spirit the com mercial and material effect is usually urged. It is pleaded that mob vengeance will arrest the investment of capital or retard the growth of a prosperous popu- lation from without but, in truth, this is the least of the considerations to be named.
 With mob violence invoked what have we? For every victim of the mob, whether guilty or not, society suffers, and most lamentably. Great as is the sin against the negro in the vengeance visited, it is much greater against the whites. For every black criminal, real white criminals are made and stalk forth into society. This is within itself suf- ficient to arouse public sentiment But there is another grave considera- ton. and that is that the mob which abandons the processes of self-control weakens the personal self-control which conquers and destroys crime, and in- creases by it's ferocities the very animal ism it has attempted to destroy In it's horror, the instructions of the mob touches the minds of tens of thousands. It's barbarities burn today the guilty, and tomorrow burn the innocent
 Still further, when bands of irresponsi- ble men are permitted to perpetuate the worst crimes not only is the society of the present demoralized. but there is pos itively transmitted to the young genera tion contempt for law and zest for crime, the result of all which is that as society proceeds on it's way it's ,safe- guards crumble, and the road to anarchy is the wider opened.
 But we are sometimes naively told that it is impossible to suppress mob violence l Is it? Then here is the dilemma, To say that crime can run rampant in the state and that the laws cannot be enforced, k [ to acknowledge ourselves incapable o1 1, self government. The plea forces its own logical and destructive conclusion. The fact needs only to be named in or 1 der to be recognized that we are more ab- sorbed by eommercialism than by any
 other element. Almost everything is es- ! timated by dollars and cents. Let us suppose that a body of bandits who
 after cutting the wires about the city should boldly dash into one of the lead
 ing cities of 4Alaba ma. loot its chief banl, i and as the James boys did in the west years ago, mvsteriously disappear. What ] would be the result? The people of the
 state would be aroused from limit to con- ! fine. The governor. every sheriff. every policeman and constabulery would be astir, and they would not cease till the
 perpetra tors were run down. What would ' be the cause of the commotion9 A banl, [ had been boldly robbed of several thou
 sand dollars,
 But here are II people lynched in 8 siven state, killed outright, by parties l unknown as one can quote the. usua