of lynching—the search of the mob for new thrills when relatively painless hanging or shooting no longer sufficed to appease it. As the user of drugs demands increasing quantities of the opiate upon which he relies for excitation, so does the lyncher demand savagery—always the story of physical cruelty in its effect upon those who practise it.
These harsher methods were seldom practised until the new century had begun. Isolated burnings at the stake, it is true, were known as far back as 1835, but these were so unusual that they created nation-wide discussion and indignation when they occurred. The public conscience had not then become inured to such things. In the Forum Walter Hines Page accurately foretold and warmed of the danger to the South of unchecked lynching when, in 1893, he said that "the great danger is not in the first violation of the law, nor in the crime itself, but in the danger that Southern public sentiment under the stress of this phase of the race problem will lose the true perspective of civilization."
How true this has been, not only for the South, but for all of the United States, can be seen by examination of the history of lynching during recent years, remembering at the same time the almost unbroken calm with which such conditions have been accepted by all save a few. In the ten years from January 1, 1918, through 1927, American mobs lynched 454 persons. Of these, 38 were white, and 416 were coloured. Eleven of the
