atrocious crimes coming at short intervals after the previous exercise of the mob’s philosophy of ‘prevention.’”  “Lynching as a remedy,” says Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, “is a ghastly failure.” The opposite opinion, however, has still its champions. “The lynch lightning,” says Mr. W. B. Smith (an anti-negro extremist), “seldom strikes twice in the same district or community.” “The Colour-Line,” p. 259.

9. The commonly accepted statistics of lynchings are those supplied by the Chicago Tribune. I have before me the figures for the years 1885-1904, somewhat vitiated by the fact that the enumeration for 1888 is incomplete. It would appear that in these years 2942 lynchings in all occurred, 2042 of the victims being negroes, and the remaining 900 belonging to other races. But the proportion of negro lynchings steadily increased. In 1886, 71 negroes were lynched, as against 62 men of other races; whereas in 1901 the respective figures were 107 and 28. Out of the whole number of lynchings 25 per cent. were for rape, 42 per cent. for murder, and 33 per cent. for other offences. More than 80 per cent. of the whole number of lynchings occurred in the Southern States.

10. Washington, November 15, 1909. “Ninety days’ imprisonment was imposed to-day upon ex-Sheriff Joseph F. Shipp, of Chattanooga, Tenn., by the supreme court of the United States for contempt of court in failing to prevent the lynching of a negro, Edward Johnson, whose execution had been stayed by the court.

“Luther Williams and Nick Nolan were sentenced to imprisonment for ninety days for connection with the lynching, and Jeremiah Gibson, the jailer, Henry Padgett and William Mayers, all of Chattanooga, for sixty days.”

29

IV RHETORIC IN LOUISVILLE

Louisville, Kentucky, is not an attractive city. It is as flat as my hand; its atmosphere is grimy; its buildings vary from the commonplace to the mean. It has one or two of the dumpy sky-scrapers—only some ten or twelve storeys high—which are indispensable to the self-respect of every American city of a certain size; but one feels that they are products of mere imitative ostentation, not of economic necessity. In Louisville the names, or numbers, of the streets are scarcely ever stuck up. It is characteristic of a half-grown American town that you can generally read the names of streets which have no houses in them; but when the houses are built, the name-boards seem to be thrown away.

I am apt to estimate the 

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