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In nearly all cases Southern lynch-ings are the result of grave provocation. But in Maryland a Negro •who has killed a white man and was himself almost killed by the son of the victim was taken from the hospital and lynched. The almost-dead man had to be carried to the point where he was strung up. His body was taken to the Negro district of the town of Salisbury, where it was cremated as the mob shouted. The logic here may be characteristically shaky, but the intent is plain enough, and so is the advertising. The Tribune, in far-away Albuquerque, N. M., is more logical but no less devastating:
Tom Johnson, the Negro convicted of the brutal murder of a little Santa Fe girl, must die in the electric chair. . . . We commend the case of Johnson to the attention of other localities in the United States, particularly to the officials and citizens of the great Free State of Maryland. . . . Several days ago mob law broke out in Maryland and a wounded Negro was lynched. The Negro was guilty of shooting his employer. Santa Fe county citizens flamed with indignation at a greater outrage in their community, but they kept their heads. The officials of Santa Fe county acted quickly, calmly. The case has been a triumph of orderly process throughout, Sheriff Baca took no chances.
Ill MO one expects much from Tennessee, or, for that matter, from New Mexico. The former is a backward State upon almost all counts. It ranks forty-second in wealth, whereas Maryland is nineteenth. In education it is forty-first, in health forty-fourth, and in public order forty-third. Its usual place in the news is that of a comic character, what with its anti-evolution laws, its Holy Boilers
rmrct raters, irom wnom tne cinzenry in general have taken their cue. Sordidness and Intolerance have become familiar in a' section once famous for Culture and Gentility. For years there has been recognized on the Shore a leadership that appeals strictly to Emotion, and lets Reason grow cold and numb. A notice under the masthead of the Citizen informs me that it is "the official and recognized organ of the Democratic party in Frederick county." From the masthead itself I learn that the president of the company publishing the paper is the Hon. David C. Winebrenner 3d, Secretary of State of Maryland.
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