random and lynched, as the newspapers
say, "on general principles." That sort of lynching is the most honest
and normal, and we are also inclined to think that it is also the most
enjoyable, for the other sort brings moral indignation with it, and
moral indignation is disagreeable. No man can be both indignant and
happy.

But here, seeking to throw a feeble beam or two of light into the mental
processes of the American proletarian, we find ourselves entering upon a
discussion that grows narrow and perhaps also dull. Lynching, after all,
is not an American institution, but a peculiarly Southern institution,
and even in the South it will die out as other more seemly recreations
are introduced. It would be quite easy, we believe, for any Southern
community to get rid of it by establishing a good brass band and having
concerts every evening. It would be even easier to get rid of it by
borrowing a few professional scoundrels from the Department of Justice,
having them raid the "study" of the local Methodist archdeacon, and
forthwith trying him publicly--with a candidate for governor as
prosecuting officer--for seduction under promise of salvation. The
trouble down there is not a special viciousness. The Southern poor
white, taking him by and large, is probably no worse and no better than
the anthropoid proletarian of the North. What ails the whole region is
Philistinism. It has lost its old aristocracy of the soil and has not
yet developed an aristocracy of money. The result is that its cultural
ideas are set by stupid and unimaginative men--Southern equivalents of
the retired Iowa steer staffers and grain sharks who pollute Los
Angeles, American equivalents of the rich English nonconformists. These
men, though they have accumulated wealth, have not yet acquired the
capacity to enjoy civilized recreations. Worse, most of them are still
so barbarous that they regard such recreations as immoral. The
dominating opinion of the South is thus against most of the devices that
would diminish lynching by providing substitutes for it. In every
Southern town some noisy clown of a Methodist or Presbyterian clergyman
exercises a local tyranny. These men are firmly against all the
divertissements of more cultured regions. They oppose prize-fighting,
horse-racing, Sunday baseball and games of chance. They are bitter
prohibitionists. By their incessant vice-crusades they reduce the
romance of sex to furtiveness and piggishness. They know no