tes, is also at
the bottom of another familiar American phenomenon, to wit, lynching. A
good part of the enormous literature of lynching is devoted to a
discussion of its causes, but most of that discussion is ignorant and
some of it is deliberately mendacious. The majority of Southern
commentators argue that the motive of the lynchers is a laudable
yearning to "protect Southern womanhood," despite the plain fact that
only a very small proportion of the blackamoors hanged and burned are
even so much as accused of molesting Southern womanhood. On the other
hand, some of the negro intellectuals of the North ascribe the recurrent
butcheries to the Southern white man's economic jealousy of the Southern
black, who is fast acquiring property and reaching out for the
prerogatives that go therewith. Finally, certain white Northerners seek
a cause in mere political animosity, arguing that the Southern white
hates the negro because the latter is his theoretical equal at the
polls, though actually not permitted to vote.

All of these notions seem to us to be fanciful. Lynching is popular in
the South simply because the Southern populace, like any other
populace, delights in thrilling shows, and because no other sort of
show is provided by the backward culture of the region. The introduction
of prize-fighting down there, or baseball on a large scale, or amusement
places like Coney Island, or amateur athletic contests, or picnics like
those held by the more truculent Irish fraternal organizations, or any
other such wholesale devices for shocking and diverting the proletariat
would undoubtedly cause a great decline in lynching. The art is
practised, in the overwhelming main, in remote and God-forsaken regions,
in which the only rival entertainment is offered by one-sided political
campaigns, third-rate chautauquas and Methodist revivals. When it is
imitated in the North, it is always in some drab factory or mining town.
Genuine race riots, of course, sometimes occur in the larger cities, but
these are always economic in origin, and have nothing to do with
lynching, properly so-called. One could not imagine an actual lynching
at, say, Atlantic City, with ten or fifteen bands playing, blind pigs in
operation up every alley, a theatre in every block or two, and the
boardwalk swarming with ladies of joy. Even a Mississippian, transported
to such scenes, succumbs to the atmosphere of pleasure, and so has no
seizures of moral rage against