NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 28 1
be baited for the honor of our Savior. Negro lynching claims more and more the character of a public right. It appeals to the punitive instinct, to race antipathy, and to the white man's pride, as well as to the homicidal frenzy. One shudders to think what roots a custom may strike when a fierce animal appetite like this and a per- verted ideal emotion combine together to defend it.
One or two real fanatics there may be in every lynching, actuated by a maniacal sense of punitive justice. They are a kind of "reversion," which civilization par- ticularly requires to extirpate. The other accomplices are only average men, victims of the moment when the greatest atrocities are committed, of nothing but irrespon- sible mob contagion, but invited to become part of the mob and predisposed to the peculiar sort of contagion, by the diabolical education which the incessant examples of the custom and of its continued impunity are spreading with fearful rapidity throughout our population. Was ever such a privilege offered ? Dog-fights, bull- fights, prize-fights, what are they to a man-hunt and a negro-burning ? The illiterate whites everywhere, always fretting in their monotonous lives for some more drastic excitement, are feeding their imaginations in advance on this new possibility. The hoodlums in our cities are being turned by the newspapers into as knowing critics of the lynching game as they long have been of the prize-fight and football. They long to possess " souvenirs." They agree on the belief that any accused negro is their perquisite and property, and that to burn him is only the newest form of the white man's burden. Ho-.v far this education has already proceeded we are likely to learn any day in a startling manner. And the supineness of our officials and the mealy- mouthed utterances of our journals seem to me to reveal an incredible misunderstand- ing of the real situation. No student of history or knower of human nature could be so fooled for a moment.
I unhesitatingly stand by my prophecy, for there is nothing now in sight to check the spread of an epidemic far more virulent than the cholera. The fact seems recog- nized that local juries will not indict or condemn ; so that, unless special legislation ad hoc is speedily enacted, and unless many "leading citizens " are hung nothing short of this will check the epidemic in the slightest degree, and denunciations from the press and pulpit only make it spread the faster we shall have negro burning in a very few years on Cambridge Common and the Boston Public Garden. Letter of PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES, in the Springfield Republican.
The Promotion of Industrial Efficiency. The present inquiry deals with methods and systems used in Germany, England, and the United States for obtaining that active co-operation between capital and labor now essential for the maintenance of position as a manufacturing country.
In Germany the movement has been in the direction of reform in the social con- ditions of the workers rather than toward high wages and bonus systems. In most of the larger German engineering works we find elaborate arrangements and organiza- tions for the comfort of the workers during working hours. The state system of insurance against sickness, accident, and old age also assists in ameliorating the lot of the German worker and renders him content with longer hours of work and with lower wages than those customary in the United Kingdom and America. Mr. Barnes, secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, remarks in his report : " The general protection of workmen and provision for their comfort is much more complete than in this country (England), and the shops are much more spacious and
cleanly Another common feature is the use of first-class appliances. A no
less marked feature .... is the leisurely manner in which the men go about their work. With one exception, in all the shops visited, men smoked during working hours, and in most of them there were canteens or other provision for getting refresh- ments while at work."
In the United Kingdom the majority of works are still conducted on the laissez- faire principle of the Manchester school of economists. The teaching of this school results in paying the worker the smallest possible wage, and in making none but the legally necessary provisions for his social or physical comfort. Under these conditions the usual relation between employers and employed is one of antagonism. The con- version of private firms into joint-stock companies in recent years has still further tended to widen the breach between capital and labor. The directors of a few of the
