Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-07-31
MoBS MISREPREsENT AMERICA;
DO THEY BELLE OTHERS, TOO?
We May View Other Countries More In
tellleently Through the Smoke at
Chicago and Washington

race riots is to put wrong interpreta-
ton upon the ancient curse of mob
psychology.
A mob is a mob 1t has no mind, no
courage, no rational motive based upon
race prejudice or any reasoned objective.
In action it represents nothing but the
primeval brute that still persists beneath
thin veneer in familiar types of sub
normal men and women of every race and
color-always ready for fling when the
odds are heavily upon its side. 1t was
mob that cast helpless men and women
strikers into the deserts at Bisbee, Ariz.
1t was a mob of strikers in Chicago that
defed its leaders yesterday and shouted
ITO hell with the publc!"
The mob that wrecked the Office of a
New York newspaper which happened to
be a propagandist of unconventional po-
litical opinions did not act upon knowl
edge, convictions or sense of patriotism.
1t was the usual aggregation of towards
made suddenly reckless by knowledge
of the advantage that goes with over
whelming numbers.
Mobs do not react to race antipathies
alone. They burned women in Massachu-
sets. They started religious riots in
They harass Jews in Poland, Americans
in Mexico and Socialists in New York
with equal violence. They will riot about
anything-or. nothing.
Race hatred was merely incidental to
the fights in Chicago and Washington. In
the unprovoked aggression by white men
and the savage reprisals of the negroes
mob psychology, the will to destroy that
overleaps civilized restraints wherever
mental detectives happen accidentally to
gather in force, was clearly apparent.
For America the circumstances of the
riots in the two cities would be particu-
larly unfortunate at this time, even if it
were not for the manifest injustice in
volved for loyal and warm-hearted peo-
pie whose great misfortune it is to be
misunderstood.
The negroes in Washington who at
tackled white women and thus gave the
mob an excuse for action have not been
caught. In Chicago none of the white
men who stoned a negro child to it's death
has been arrested. For the moment at
least our pretentious ultimatums to the
lesser peoples of the earth must seem
pitifully futile. Congress is again SOL
emnly warning Mexico that the lives of
American citizens must be protected at
all COSTS What of the American citizens,
white and black, who have been shot to
death within sight of the Capitol on Penn
sylvania avenue?
The fact is that for some unknown rea-
son the mob spirit happens now to be
pretty active everywhere in the world.
The outbreaks in Chicago and Washing
ton ought to haye a SOLDERING effect on
the hot-blooded Americans who would
whip this country into war to put down
in Mexico the sort of violence that we
seem unable to prevent in the United
| States. What of our brusque rebukes to
| the Bolsheviks for their occasional shoot
| ings? Can we speak with the same au-
thority from now on?
There is no way Of knowing what is
said in Russia or India or Germany or
Mexico of the recent outbreaks in this
country. But 1t is easy to imagine that
similar reports from abroad would set a
| lot of complacent Americans to talking of
peoples unfit for self-government." We
should have jingoes believing from the
housetops for the feet and for armies of
invasion.
There is talk, of course, of investiga-
tions in Congress. Congress is always
ready to oblige with an investigation.
But it did nothing when streams of negro
lahorers, untitled by training and tenn
permanent for the life of industrial cities,
were being directed into northern war
factories by employment agents who de-
populated southern farms for the head
tax which they were able to collect for
Jobs. 1t was plain that there would be
confusion when these men suddenly found
themselves in unfamiliar territory, out of
work, threatened with hunger and penned
in the overcrowded slums of cities whose
ways and standards were strange to
them. Congress calmly wiped the federal
employment service out of existence, thus
abolishing an agency that might have
been able to deal intelligently and sys-
tematically with the growing problem OF
those homeless and migratory negroes
who usually are al Tie rooI ol tne trouple
in Chicago and elsewhere.
There is a race problem in America
1t is acute and it is pressing, but no one
doubts that it will be solved sooner OF
later. Only oversensitive whites anG
oyersensitive blacks make it cause fol
fear or violence.
To hate a negro because of his color
| alone Ia to manifest q profound ant
cruel ignorance of race that has fine
virtues and talents of its own. If we dc
not yet know how to utilize all that il
generous, flexible and promising in the
negro character, the fault is not alto
gether ours. The negro has been sci
down, largely against his will, in coun
try that has not yet been able to find 9
suitable place for him.
It is impossible to believe that the YER
satiIity of the negro, his quick sympathy