duly executed. Clark’s last request was that the black cap be kept off, so that all might see how easy he could meet death.”[60:7] The second one is taken from accounts of the execution at Denton, Md., of “Wish” Shepperd, colored, for the outrage of a fifteen-year-old white girl:[60:8] [61] [61] “He told his spiritual advisers that he had a message for the public: ‘Tell all the young men to avoid the fate that awaits me by joining the church and attending its services.’ [Evidently inspired by his preacher advisers] . . . He slumbered soundly, the guards noticed, and awoke early this morning apparently indifferent to his doom. . . . With a firm step he accompanied the officers and his spiritual advisers to the scaffold which was erected near the Choptank River. Passing undismayed through the throng which had gathered along the way from the prison to the gallows. His gaze passed fearlessly around surveying the people.” . . . Again, in connection with the lynching of Negroes in the South, one must not lose sight of the conditions that are peculiar to that section. The greater the number of Negroes in proportion to the whites in any State or community the easier it is for the Negro to commit crime and escape. And the Negro criminal does often escape. Seldom is it found that the Negro will aid in the detection of the Negro criminal, rather otherwise. Even the hope of escape is a wonderful encouragement to the criminally inclined. Now, before the War, as is well known, the South was almost entirely an agricultural section. [62]It had but few cities and these were small. In the last thirty or forty years, however, it has been rapidly developing manufacturing industries. Some of the cities have become great industrial centers. [62] Nor is manufacturing confined at all to the large cities. Indeed, almost every town in some parts has a cotton mill or other establishment. As illustrations, I may mention Hickory, N. C., and La Grange, Ga. Hickory, with a population of about 5,000, has two large cotton mills; the Piedmont Wagon Shops, which employs hundreds of men; several furniture factories, saw mills, and other industrial interests. La Grange, a city of about 6,000, has ten cotton mills, one of which is valued at $1,000,000, and four of the others at $500,000, each. In the manufacture of cotton alone the South has increased from 316,000 bales in 1885 to 3,193,000 bales in 1915.
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