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GOV. RITCHIE AN« '•
THE PRESIDENCY
Criticism has fcfeeu directed at Governor Albert C. Ritchie for the lynching of tho Negro Williams herein December 4th and i some quarters it has been insinuated, if no! openly expressed, that the occurrence will injure the governor's chances for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Among thoughtful people such statements should ba accepted as another form of idle political gossip that has not the slightest foundation in fact. Traced to its source it will be found to originate from the governor's critics who seek to capitalize upon tha lynching as a step in retarding the progress of popular accept:,nee of the Maryland executive as a presidential possibility. It is to the credit of the Maryland governor that his adversaries can find no other issues to use against him.
Governor Ritchie cou'd not have stopped the lynching, :or the crime struck with such suddenness that even local authorities—with an unquestioned record for eil'ichncy—were found unprepared, and so quieciy that only a very •small proportion of the city's populace knew wilat nad happened until the whole affair was over.
Under the Maryland Constitution adopt:d in 1876, ho went to the ex-ty of his gubernatorial authority when he instructed the attorney-General to eo-operate with the county State's Attorney in an investigation to establish the,:identity of the mob leaders.
As for bringing the offenders to trail—in the event they are identified —and as for procuring convictions, that rests exclusively with the jurois in this county. No state or federal authority can intervene.
No one thought of impeaching the president of the United States when a shot from a Coal* Guard vessel killed a member of the crew of the rum runner "I'm Alone". The president's responsibility in that case is even more firmly fixed than is Governor Ritchie's in connection with the lynching.
The positions of the Governor of Maryland and the Governor of New York are somewhat analogous. The former's connection with the lynching case is as far i amoved as the latter's responsibility i'or the overt acts charged againsi r rtain courts and public officials in N .'V York city by the legislative invest it; .ting committee of that state.
Consider!;:^ the facts as they actually exist, what, we might ask, does the lynching episode have to do with Governor Ritchie's ability to act upon such vital matters of national import as: a moratorium of inter-governmental debts, cancellation of war reparations, whether a high or moderately low tariff :s for the best interests of AmeiJ an industry and the working- man, -; vernment or private ownership of public utilities, farm relief, unempolyment relief, world disarmament, settlement of the controversy over national prohibition, balancing of the federal budget, conservation of national resources, and the thousand and oae other major problems before the American people today.
Compared with those vital matters th'-j lynching, even though there had existed a fixed responsibility upon the governor, is certainly an infintestimal issue.
The lynching here was nothing more or less than a local revolt against Communistic influences that had made its appearance for several weeks previous';/. Inspired by such teachings, the mob's victim, by his own confession, killed his employer and planm to murdor "four or five other people."
We have yet to hear in this city or in other Eastern Shore counties mob violence cordoned as a method of supplanting established courts of justice.
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