ed in our
Southern States. This is but a few hundred short of the total number
of soldiers who lost their lives in Cuba during the Spanish-American
War. If we would realise still more fully how far this unfortunate
evil is leading us on, note the classes of crime during a few months
for which the local papers and the Associated Press say that lynching
has been inflicted. They include "murder," "rioting," "incendiarism,"
"robbery," "larceny," "self-defence," "insulting women," "alleged
stock-poisoning," "malpractice," "alleged barn-burning," "suspected
robbery," "race prejudice," "attempted murder," "horse-stealing,"
"mistaken identity," etc.

The evil has so grown that we are now at the point where not only
blacks are lynched in the South, but white men as well. Not only this,
but within the last six years at least a half-dozen coloured women
have been lynched. And there are a few cases where Negroes have
lynched members of their own race. What is to be the end of all this?
Furthermore, every lynching drives hundreds of Negroes out of the
farming districts of the South, where they make the best living and
where their services are of greatest value to the country, into the
already over-crowded cities.

I know that some argue that the crime of lynching Negroes is not
confined to the South. This is true; and no one can excuse such a
crime as the shooting of innocent black men in Illinois, who were
guilty of nothing, except seeking labour. But my words just now are to
the South, where my home is and a part of which I am. Let other
sections act as they will; I want to see our beautiful Southland free
from this terrible evil of lynching. Lynching does not stop crime. In
the vicinity in the South where a coloured man was alleged recently to
have committed the most terrible crime ever charged against a member
of my race, but a few weeks previously five coloured men had been
lynched for supposed incendiarism. If lynching was a cure for crime,
surely the lynching of those five would have prevented another Negro
from committing a most heinous crime a few weeks later.

We might as well face the facts bravely and wisely. Since the
beginning of the world crime has been committed in all civilised and
uncivilised countries, and a certain percentage of it will always be
committed both in the North and in the South; but I believe that the
crime of rape can be stopped. In proportion to the numbers and
intelligence of the population of