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»¦"— r*a{?e Two
THE CAMBRIDGE RECORD
W-KJ )N ESDAY, DEGSJ&BER.!), 1:>:}1
9
TheCanibridgeRecord
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Entered as second class matter in the Postoffice at Cambridge, Md.
CAMBRIDGE, MP., DEC.. 9, 1931
Pnfcliaued bj
Webb & Webb
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seem to make so incumbent upon them We hope, too, that all of them before uttering the severe \vords of censure which are' attributed to some of them, for the words of some of them had a harshness which did not seem compatible with their high calling, asked Divine inspiration that
persons have forgotten it, -especially that portion of the aritcle which referred to William Jennings Bryan, whom he would have taken to the top of the Washington Monument in Washington, disemboweled and hurled his remains into the Potomac River- Possibly a rather polite form
The Eastern Shore Kultur
they might deal charitably with their: of lynching.
fellow man. I We are republishing Mr. Mencken's
By H. Ii. Mencken
(Copyright, 1931, By The Evening
Sun. Republication without
permission prohibted)
has
Does Not Meet Issue
men own
The Sun in its issue of this mom-• jng in quoting from the editorial published in this paper Saturday attempts to mislead its r-eaders by quoting a letter of Governor. Ritchie, to Judge John R. Pattison dated November 30th, but is so happens that this letter of the Governor's followed hi? first letter to Judge Pattison about troops by more than two weeks. Why does not The Sun published the, be ginning of the correspondence which began with the letter to State's. Attorney James A. McAllister on Nev-em.ber 10th and the letter to Judge. Pattison on November 13th.
In these letters the Govenmr,makes known .his intention of sending tht ¦ tate'iifilitia and the 'state 'police tc .< 'ajiibrvitet' for the trial of Yuel I.ee alias Orphan Jones. The Governor has' no letters from Judge Pattison o< State's Attorney McAllister whicl called for his letters of those date If. the Sun, wants to be fair, and i not influenced by influences antagon istia to the Eastern Shore, why no let its readers have the first i art s: ven occurring in the penitential y md with the constant conflict bet-
article of Monday and know that \\'A charming simplicity and its de-! lightful¦¦'manner *wrll 'appeal to our; readers.
""riveVytme knows that we are "op-| posed to lynching, that we deplore the unfortunate lynching that occurred "last week and we deeply resent the implication that the people of the Eastern Shore, either by silence or expression-, give their approval to such lawless methods. But we also resent 'hat form of publicity which day after day spread propaganda that tends to encite the less responsible citizenship to violence and then, atter having sown the seeds of violence, at-
empts to shift the responsibility for Lhe crop produced. ,
lykcIhngsInstate
' in half century
A Record Of The Lynchinr?s In Maryland During Past Forty-Five Years Shows Nine On The Western Shore And Six On The Eastern Shore.
sicnal failures of the latter with philosophical calm. If the people of Wicomico want to condone and
---------------- i ratify such cowardly outrages, then
I ; they have an inalienable right to do
NOT many observant Marylanders, | so- The rest of the State may pro-I take it, were surprised by the news! test, but it cannot take that right of last Friday's extraordinarily sav- away from them- All it can do is to age and revolting lynching at Salis-ue them know plainly what it thinks bury. Something of the sort had | of them.
Communication
A record of the lynchings which have occurred in Maryland during the past forty-five years shows that there have been fifteen of these and that nine were on the Western Shore and six on the Eastern- One of those lynched was a white man and he was among the six, lynched on the Eastern Shore.
The counties in which the lynchings have taken place are: ¦ West-em Shore: Alleghany 1; Anne Arundel 2; Baltimore 1; Carroll 1; Frederick. 1; Howard 1; Prince George's 1 and St. Mary's 1, making a total of !)- Eastern Shore: Caroline 1; Kent 1; Somerset 3; Wicomico 1, making a total of G.
Those lynched were: ,
Matthew Williams, lynched at Salisbury, Dec. 4th. He was charged with the murder of Daniel Elliott.
Marshall Price lynched at Don-ton, March 26, 1895.
King Johnson, lynched at Brooklyn, Anne Arundel County, December 25, 1911.
Howard Cooper, Negro, lynched June 12, 1885, at Towsori( Baltimore county. Cooper was charged with attacking Miss Katie. Gray, a
been plainly hatching down in that forlorn corner of the State for a long while. There was a time, year3 ago, when it was the seat of an urbane and charming culture, dominated by an enlightened and. public-spirited gentry, but of late it has succumbed tc its poor white trash, who now determine its ideas and run its affairs. The Ku; Klux Klan, which was luughed at. in all the more civilized parts of Maryland, :got a firm lodgment in the lower counties of the SI.ore, .and the brutish imbecilities that. it, propagated are still accepted gravely by large, numbers of the people, including not a few who should know better- The whole area is a lush stamping-ground for 'knavish politicians, pre-hensible professional patriots, and whooping soul-savers- It is, quite naturally, a stronghold of Prohibition (and of iiie rot-gut liquors that go therewith), and within its bounds tinpot revivalism is making its last stand in Maxj-Jand.
There could be no better indication of the depths to which public opinion has sunk in Wicomico and Dorchester counties than the comments of the two local papers, trie Salisbury Times and the Cambridge Daily Banner, upon the lynching. The latter, to be sure, deplored it formally, but only formally: the rest of its comment was devoted to hysterical railings against Baltimore, and disingenuous attempts to distort and ciraeal the facts. The former wont to the almost incredible length of dismissing the- atrocity as a "derm ration" Well, the word soiiietii fits. It was indeed a demonstration of what civilization can come to in a region wherein-there are no competent police, little save a simian self-seeking in public office,, no apparent intelligence on the bench, and no courage and no decency in the local press.
Certainly if would be silly to think of the lynching as if it .were an isolated incident. It was, in fact, nothing of the sort. It was the natural culmination of a degenerating process mat has been in progress for years. At least since the World War the lower Shore has been going downhill, mentally, and morally- I has been sliding out of Maryland and into the orbit of Arkansas and Tennessee, Mississippi and the more flea-bitten half of Virginia- Time and again the whole State has been menaced by the peculiar swinishness °f its boozing-dry politicians, and now it holds, us all up to the contempt of the nation and the world nblic obscenity worthy
by stagin;: of canniba
ir
IN the immediate premises, unfortunately, not much can be done. The L-nllnrif Wieomiconians. having I that. it. has turned Communist!
in
THE remedy lies in another: direction. What is needed down in the Bible Belt df the Shore is simply a revival of enlightenment, a liberation of decent public opinion. There are plenty of people- in Wicomico who view Friday's lynching precisely as any other self-respecting man must view it- The difficulty is that the running of things in that whole unhappy re'gion.-rhaS passed into the hands of ninth-rate men. It is cut. off from . ,easy contact with the rest of the world, and its poverty has caused most of its best sons to move out. So, it,'has become an Alsatia of morons, which is to say, lynchers.
What it cries for without knowing it is more attention from the rest of the State. We have let it sweat in its own juices without paying anything more than casual attention to it- We have even allowed it to arrogate to itself a political ¦power and importance altogether out of line with its state of civilization- Baltimore City sends one delegate to Annapolis for each 22,300 of its population, but Wicomico county sends one for every 7.800. Baltimore, with 805.000 population, has six State senators; Wicomico with but 31.660. 'has one. In other words, the vote of the president of the Johns Hopkins University or of the Baltimore ¦ & Ohio Railroad. when it comes to electing the upper House of the Legislature, is worth but one-third as much as the vote of the Salisbury witch-bijrners, and when conies it Delecting the upper House, but one-fourth as much.
Such grotesque disparities stand in plain contempt of all fairness and reason. They not only deprive Baltimore of its plain rights; they also give a false and evil influence to the low-grade political backs who flourish In such swamps, preyiag upon the ignorant and ignoble hinds They are to blame for the prevailing yearning, so noticeable in all the backwaters of the State, to spll into the city's eye whenever possible to oppress it with stupid and costly legislation, to loot the money of its taxpayers, and, in general to bid it be damned.
IV THE Salisbury lynching, at least in some part, was a gesture,to that end. It. was the local morons' answer to the»effort of city men tc make them behave with common de cency. They wanted to do thingf in their own barbaric way, and what is more, they wanted to prove tr the city slickers that they could. The .Cambridge Daily Banner, foam-liig hi bad' English, seeks' to' .out al the blame for the sorry business on the Sunpaper, and hints broadly
M'-
'Tis an ill wind that blows no Ecod in some direction- Take for instance the sunny climes of the t»op~ ics that lures the idle rich in winter and compare it with the chilling sleet and snow storms of the north where countless stand in breadlines and seek shelter wherever to be round- So, the same rule applies to the continued bickering and underhand methods of those concerned in the present controversy of meting out Justice to those who are guilty. Very seldom are lords or barons of gangland guilty of murder materially, it is the'underlings^er goats that pull the chestnuts frotn the fire. So it is'with many cbrjtoratibris and individuals who see a chance to prey upon the unfortunates.
They employ many ways and means to carry on their nefarious schemes-
To create hatred aganist capital to the poor white and preach racial prejudice to the negro, seems to my mind the sole purpose of some or-' ganizations of which-we have heard, so little about until recently. Can; anyone enlighten me on the true! facts concerning the purpose and principles upon which the so-called International Labor Defense League is founded.
Is it truly an American organization or does it exist solely for the; purpose of which I have already stated. To be sure if its American | I cannot understand why it works with so much secrecy and is in the hands cf the unscrupulous who are as guilty of contempt of court as it is possible to be.
Now on the other hand if its un-American why not get naturalized and be a regular chronic nuisance as ninety-nine out of every one hundred of their ilk appear to be.
If the United States Government can find time to lay off, the bootlegger and tax payer for awhile and spend a little more time and money in weeding out such undesirables, then possibly an American citizen could find Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness-
To be sure we have the freedom of the press in our fair and noWe land—and some pa.pers exploit that privilege to their own personal gain-While others no doubt, the minority, appear to have a little civic pride left. f
A newspaper does not rely oh subscriptions as revenue to continue iperations, but does rely on subscriptions as a means , of charging or their advertising in this way. The mare blaterit and screaming headlines carried by some papers regardless of the true worth of the tories whether they be fact or fic-ion, if Jt goes over they have pos--,ib!y sold an extra 5,000 which adds :pon their monthly average circulation on which their charges for ad-vertisingis computed and based for National Advertising, etc.
The Sunpapers at Baltimore are no more interested in this lynching from a humane or sympathetic standpoint than Bernard Ades. Us sole purpose-and objective is to sell more papers, thereby materially filling their'coffers with the filthy lucre' of winch the morbid And curiously hungry thrive on.
As' for Mr. Ades and his organization, (who are behind the lines
ED AGAINST MARCHERS
Fifteen Hundred Demonstrators Marched back And Forth On Pennsylvania Avenue To Find Both The White House And Capitol Doors Closed.
By W- B. Ragsdale Washington, Dec. 7- (JP)—Fifteen hundred- -demonstrators marched back and forth o«r: Pennsylvania Avenue today to -find both the White House and Capitol doors barred against them.
Singing the "Internationale", and chatting slogans calling for unemployed insurance, tney paraded under a police escort and1 found other armed hluecoats waiting, for them at either end of the Avenue-
At the .capital. their representatives weje twice repulsed in efforts to gain the Senate floor to demand unemployment insurance. Sergeant-at-arms Barry informed Herbert Benjamin, their leader, that today was npf the day for receiving petitions and that theirs would have to be presented through a member.
Annual Meeting Of Dorchester Ccunty Taberca'os'.s Associat'o:i
The attention of all members of the Dorchester County Tuberculosis Association is called to the annual meeting of the Association to b > held tomorrow, Tuesday, December 8, a? the office 123 High Street, commencing at 3 P. M. This is an Important meeting at which it is necessary to- have a quorum of the members present in order to elect directors and transact other business- Because of the large membership list, it has, been deemed advisable by the Board in the interest of economy, to use this method in urging members to attend. It would be encouraging to the Board to have the members show their interest in the selection of directors, as according to the t)y-laws the officers of this Association have to be chosen from this Board of Directors. All solicitors in the recent campaign are . especially asked to Be present. The meeting will not be long and tedious, but is verv important for the future welfare of the Association. '
ANOTHER RECORD IN BARGAINS!
Low Prices for Repairing anil Ite-charging All Hakes of Batteries
Ce Reg. Lake
129 Race Street
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