p.6....During the last five years of the century just passed, there were 803 known lynchings, but statistics say nothing about whether or not the perpetrators of these lawless deeds have received their due punishment. Everywhere, now lynching is prohibited by law and every participant in acts of lynching is liable - if a life is taken - to prosecution for manslaughter or, in addition, for murder, although unfortunately nothing is done usually beyond a threat of punishment.

The reason why legal prosecution against the lynchers is regarded impossible or where one has tried to prosecute it has proved fruitless is simply that no witnesses could be had. This is due partly to the fact that usually the whole region has been more or less in sympathy with the lynchers or else has feared their vengeance. There is also the other reason that the victims for the most part have well-earned the death-penalty, and, its infliction without previous examination, has saved the costs of long legal procedure.

This last-named consideration, namely, that the lynch law was accepted as a cheap method of ministering justice gave in the meantime an indication as to how, in our 2time, the disgraceful mischief can be fought successfully. If the lynching law is nursed by a portion of the citizens on the grounds of "cheapness" then one must make it dearer. If a country saves money through the lynching of a murderer, and officials and "the best citizens" by reason thereof are blind to the lawless method of punishment, then one must hold the county responsible for the mistakes which the lynchers often make. Proceeding from this point of view, one proposed that persons whose relatives have perished through lynching, might demand reparation from the county in which the lynching took place. A county could not of course with the same ease escape the responsibility which the participants in the lynching could, when it were simple enough to fix the place of the lynch - murder.

The thought appeared to be good, but to begin with it, showed itself but slightly fruitful. In one of the Southern states a law was adopted which entitled the lynchvictims relatives to damages of the county; but when shortly thereon a case of this kind came before the court the jury decided in favor of the defendents, and this decision was valid even in higher courts, to which the plaintif has appealed. One 3began, then to say that it is just as impossible to hold a county responsible as an individual lyncher, and in the states where one had considered the enactment of like laws, the proposals were permitted to be dropped.

But what the Southern states did not succeed in effecting through a special law enacted for the purpose, has now, according to information from Columbus, Ohio, been attained through a law, which as a whole holds the counties responsible for damages to life and property, done by mobs, to individuals and this, without that one in the enactment of the law of 1896, in Urbana, in 1897, a colored man's relatives demanded damages with the result the court allowed them $5,000.00 together with legal costs, and this decision has now been upheld by the states highest court.

Hereafter, one can not thus say any longer that it is impossible to hold the counties responsible, and one has grounds to hope that all states which mean business in regard to the lynching nuisance will follow Ohio's example by enacting laws of this kind. Also the Southern states must sooner or later follow the mentioned 4example, and thereafter, even there, the sight of "Judge Lynch" will be no more. Wherever such a law is found it will be cited by damage-seekers, and, even if in many cases, the counties concerned escape payments, it will not be true everywhere. In any event the view that the lynch-law should be preferred for economic reasons will soon be discarded.