The South Disowns Mob Violence

W

HEN the revived Ku Klux Klan came into being, one of its objects was stated to be the enforcement of personal morality. Then came instances of brutality inflicted on individuals alleged to be immoral. Naturally, followed protests and evidence that the beatings were undeserved and that personal enmity sometimes played a part. The reaction caused the Klan to disown acts of violence and in some cases to offer a reward - for the arrest of the perpetrators. The practice seemed to be dying out, but of late there have been extreme cases of brutality in Georgia and Alabama. At Toccoa, Georgia, for instance, a white woman was flogged with a heavy strap on her bare back until she fainted, and reflogged when she protested. "In Alabama," a press despatch states, "the #whipping of Negroes by masked bands of men has become so common that it passes unnoticed."

Yet there are encouraging facts in the campaign against violence and lynching. There are frequent protests by men of influence, and honest resistance to mob law by sheriffs and their posses, as, for instance, the two days' "battle of Tampa," of which we spoke lately. The cartoon from a Southern paper printed herewith is another indication. In Alabama, due to recent floggings, press despatches say that a strong anti-Klan sentiment is spreading over the State, that ministers are now preaching against brutality as a relic of barbarism and calling on law-abiding citizens to stamp it out.

This reprobation and detestation of cruelty now gathering force in localities where lynching and beating take place are having a notable effect on public sentiment. The revival of violence of this sort is sporadic; the denouncing of it is

typical and far-reaching.

North Carolina's Chain Gang
Problem

HE Institute for Research in Social

THE

Science of the University of North Carolina has just completed a survey of the county chain gang system in effect in the Old North State. The results are recorded in a volume written by the investigators, Jesse F. Steiner and Roy M. Brown, entitled "The North Carolina

August 3, 1927

Number 14

ered, the outcome is doubtful. Moreover, whipping is still in vogue, though there is no warrant for it in law. Although Chief Justice Clark has so held, he has been unable to secure the support of a majority of the Judges. The inhuman, degrading practice goes on, sometimes with fatal results.

It is refreshing to record that the

Jungle justice

State penitentiary. Though among these convicts are those serving short terms, convicts sentenced for as long as ten years are in the jails and twice as many convicts are in the county camps as are in the penitentiary. For this state of affairs road-making and repairing are to a considerable extent responsible. Petty offenders are picked up among the colored folks to keep the chain gang full.

The investigators regard the system as now conducted a failure. Men in chains are not mobile and perform their tasks poorly when under guard and in groups. Where the honor method is em

ployed, as in a very few instances, the

results are much better. Where the State has established camps the convicts, unchained and on honor, do well. The counties, however, in the main cling to conditions that are not creditable to civilization. The prisoners when not working are kept in cages, mounted on wheels, like animals in the circus. Sanitary facilities are lacking, bedding is filthy, and food poor. There is no attempt at education. Stripes and chains kill self-respect. Economically consid

Buncombe, Durham, Alamac, Rockingham, Edgecombe, and the Rocky Mount road district have built decent prisons, and that Bertie County has a permanent camp under construction.

Unquestionably the Negroes are unfairly treated by justices as the chain gang needs hands. This adds to the demerits of county control. There are signs, however, that better things are coming. This book will help bring them about.

The Subway Quarrel

A

GENERAL strike in New York's subways is announced to take place on the night of the day on which this issue of The Outlook goes to press. It will affect the Interborough system certainly; the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit probably. As many as 26,000 employees have been asked to drop work; the papers report the presence of 1,500 strike-breakers. Will it be a war or a fizzle? Last year's strike lasted only long enough to annoy and worry the traveling public and to lead the millions who use the subways to ask whether such confusion, injury, and inconvenience should not be forbidden by law.

It appears evident that the matter in dispute between the men and the management is almost wholly that of fair representation of labor in all questions arising between the company and the worker. It is true that an advance in wages is asked on the ground that similar workers in other cities get better pay than those in New York. But little stress is laid on this, and the fairness of the comparison is in doubt.

Like last year's strike, the present quarrel results from the effort of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees to organize the subway men and the refusal of the management to allow this. Mayor Walker tried to get the opponents into amicable conference; the General Man

ager (Frank Hedley) refused, and in his letter said: "Our men have contracted in writing not to become identified in any way with the organizations which those men represent." The advocates of the strike say that the men who signed this statement did so under moral coercion; that they despise the "Brotherhood" started by the company. Mr. Samuel Untermeyer, who is conducting the Transit Commission's investigation into subway affairs, proposed that a secret ballot be taken to show whether the men want the union or the Brotherhood; the company flatly refused.

Thus the strike which appears imminent as we write is really a test of strength for and against the enrolling of subway employees in the kind of organization approved by the American Federation of Labor.

The part played by the public, if one may judge by the past, is to swelter, swear at all strikes and strikers, and forget the whole matter as soon as some kind of end is reached-just or unjust. Mr. Untermeyer soundly asserts that there should be no such thing tolerated as a strike of the employees of a public service corporation. The public will concur; but that solution of the question is not as easy as it sounds. Perhaps the State and city may enact legislation applying to street and under-street railways the kind of concession and conciliation promoted by Governor Smith in the clothing-makers' troubles. But a closer analogy might be found over in Philadelphia, where the Rapid Transit Company under the Mitten plan is carrying on what The Outlook in a recent editorial called "an adventure in industrial democracy." Under this plan

The workers have equal power with the management in all matters involving wages, working conditions, or discipline-by means of branch committees, departmental committees, and, finally, central committees, of men and of management. Corresponding committees of men and management meet together, each with equal power, and with no superior veto power threatening to undo the actions assented to by both committees. In case of failure to agree, issues are presented to arbitration.

Under the Mitten Management wages are based on living costs; the workers are in part stockholders and hold over a third of the company's voting power. Both officers and men are disposed to friendliness; they have a mutual financial interest.

One hardly sees Mr. Hedley or the union leaders looking for a solution in this direction; but assuredly in the es

tablishment of mutual benefit between labor and capital will ultimately come the destruction of industrial warfare.

The End of a Hoax

HE mystery box said to have been

plates of the Book of Mormon and the Urim and Thummim by which they were read, it is not for us to say that religious delusion is a bygone thing.

The Irish Free State Unshaken

Underwood & Underwood

Frederick A. Sterling, newly appointed Minister to the Irish Free State

tional emergency and in the presence of a goodly number of bishops, was forced recently. One lone bishop attended.

As foreshadowed by the X-ray test of the box which we reported, nothing was found but trash-a pistol, cheap jewelry, a nightcap, a dice box, a lottery ticket, some written and printed pages of no moment. No prophecy, no message of salvation!

Whether the hoax was of Joanna's concoction to impress and hold her converts together or whether it is of later origin is not certain. It came into the

hands of the Psychical Research Society of London with not enough evidence of its authenticity to settle any minor property dispute in a police court. A few surviving followers of Joanna are reported to say that they never have believed in the story or in the box.

Like Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, who also began her career an almost illiterate servant girl, and also had visions and prophesied, Joanna had a strange gift of attracting disciples among those who run after every new thing. But as many thousands of people profess in our day to believe in

viously has given the leaders of the Irish Free State a new determination to carry on. The best evidence of the character of the men at the helm of the new administration in Dublin is their response to the loss of their Vice-President.

Stringent measures against political plotters are reported to be ready for passage through the Dail Eireann, the national legislature. These include the abolition of jury trial for persons guilty of committing or planning assassinations or conspiring for the overthrow of the Government. Other measures call upon all candidates for election to the Dail to pledge themselves to take the oath of allegiance to the King and of loyalty to the terms of the peace treaty with Great Britain, by which the Free State was set This latter principle is aimed against the members of Eamon De Valera's new republican party, the Fianna Fail, whose representatives sought elec tion in the last campaign and then refused to take the oath of allegiance when they appeared to be sworn in.

up.

New strength to the Irish Free State will unquestionably come from the ar rival of the first Minister from the United States, Frederick A. Sterling, and his official welcome in Dublin. This evidence of belief in the future of the Free State coming from America, where the cause of Irish self-rule always has had so many friends, should have a wide effect throughout Ireland. It is fortu nate that the event came just at the time when an underhand blow had been struck at the Irish Government.

An Old Man and a

Child-King

Rumania, became King on dedi FIVE-YEAR-OLD boy, Prince Mihai

of

20, when his grandfather, King Ferdinand, died. And as he took the throne. Premier Bratiano, the head of the socalled Liberal Party and the real power in the country, must have smiled a little grimly. For over the new King there was appointed a Regency composed of his uncle, Prince Nicholas, and the Patriarch Miron Cristea and the Supreme Court Justice G. V. Buzdugan-both the latter appointees of Bratiano. This was the arrangement that had been made be fore Ferdinand's death. So a child who