opposed to a monarchy or a highly centralized form of government. Neighbors and friends become, by election for short terms of office, not only legislators, but officers whose duty it is to enforce the laws enacted-constables, sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, magistrates and judges-and the movement of public sentiment in the local communities must, therefore, vitally affect the working of the legal system. The officers of the law whose duty it is to take charge of and protect prisoners, in accordance with the orders of the courts, consider themselves responsible, not merely to their superior officers, but responsible more or less directly to the people, their constituency, and they are, also, usually in close sympathy with that popular justification which is the sine qua non of lynching. Sheriffs and jailers fail to protect prisoners from mob violence, not because they generally lack either courage or power, but because they sympathize with the sentiment in the community, which demands a summary punishment that shall be fitted, in some measure, to what is conceived to be the enormity of the crime committed and the depravity of the accused.

Shall lynchings continue, therefore? What the answer is to be depends ultimately, and indeed primarily, upon the character and the quality of the American citizenship that is being developed. Enough has already been said to indicate how little is to gained, in this country, from prohibitive legal enactments which have no effective public sentiment behind them. The results actually obtained under the anti-lynching statutes adopted thus far bear this out. Ten states have upon their statute-books measures directed specifically against lynching. Most of these measures have remained entirely inoperative. The few that have received an attempted enforcement do not inspire confidence in their efficacy. The course taken by the debate, in the 57th Congress of the United States, on a proposed inquiry into the subject of lynching, is fairly conclusive evidence that no federal action can be taken on the subject without reviving the sectionalism and many of the evils of the Reconstruction Period. However much we may regret the fact and however reluctant we may be to face the situation, it must be admitted that there is no panacea for the practice of lynching. The history of the practice shows

how deeply it is rooted in American life and tradition, and in how far, also, it is a matter that is controlled by public sentiment.

The conclusion is therefore forced upon us that nothing can, under the limitation of our form of government, effectually stop lynchings except a radical change in public sentiment. A lynching is best defined as a summary and illegal execution at the hands of a mob, or a number of persons, who have in some degree the public opinion of the community behind them. The support of public opinion is what distinguishes lynching, on the one hand, from assassination and murder, and, on the other hand, from insurrection and open warfare. Upon American citizenship rests the responsibility of withdrawing this popular support and justification without which the practice of lynching cannot exist.

There is an opinion, widely held at the present time, that a "right to lynch" exists, a right which is closely akin to the right of self-defense. The argument seems to run in this way. If it is justifiable, by the right of self-defense, for a husband to take the life of an assailant who threatens his wife, or for a parent to commit murder in the defense of his child, it is equally justifiable for the neighbors and friends of a man who has been murdered, or whose wife or daughter has been criminally assaulted, wantonly and brutally, by some individual of bad reputation, to take the life of that individual in a summary fashion with only the merest semblance of judicial procedure. Lynching is regarded as a crime only in the sense that it is a crime against the individual lynched and, as the individual in question is of no consequence, the crime of lynching is of no consequence. This belief in a right to lynch affords some explanation of the fact that lynchers, so far, ordinarily, from suffering any legal penalty for their crime, rarely even lose caste or character in the communities in which they live.

The facts in regard to the practice of lynching, its history and its alleged justification, must be known. No one should deceive himself by thinking that because, for the last two or three years, a smaller number of lynchings has been recorded annually than for several preceding years, the practice is likely soon to be discon. tinued altogether. As long as there is a "race problem" in this country, frequent occasion will certainly be found for a recourse to summary procedure, for which it will be comparatively easy

to secure a measure of popular justification. Only an aroused public sentiment, condemnatory to the last degree, formed on the widest possible knowledge and intelligence, and actively manifested with the utmost wisdom and foresight under trying circumstances, can enable the American people to blot out what has rightly been called their national crime.

Shall the United States enter a protest against massacres in Armenia, or in Russia, or against butcheries in Central Africa, or the Philippines? By all means. But the American people should not forget that fully 3,500 residents of the United States have been put to death, since the year 1880, by violent and wholly illegal methods. Some of these victims suffered extreme torture before death came to their relief, and their sufferings were witnessed by crowds in which were women and children. In the period 1891-1904, it is on record that 25 persons were lynched by burning alive, some of them under circumstances too horrible to contemplate. All of these victims of burning alive, during this period, were negroes, with the exception of two who were Indians, and one of the negroes was a woman. Possibly these individuals were, every one, worthless wretches and the perpetrators of most despicable crimes, but no matter how great the depravity of the accused or how atrocious the crimes committed, this country cannot afford to allow suspected criminals to be dealt with after such a fashion.

The Value of Agricultural Instruction in the

Secondary Schools

BY S. A. KNAPP,

Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture

The thoughtful people of our country have become alarmed at the rapid increase of municipal wealth as compared with that of the rural districts upon which the cities depend for support. It is not alone the aggregation of great wealth and population in a few chief centres of trade, but the rapid transfer of national influence and political power from the home making and liberty loving democracy of our rural domains to the urban centres where the few are dominant. A large proportion of the vast wealth created annually from the soil, ultimately enriches the city, instead of developing and improving the resources of the country. The enormous sums paid by the farmers for transportation and for other public utilities, for insurance of all kinds, for clothing and for manufactures, all find their way into city coffers, and finally the moiety of money left the farmer from a year of toil is taken to a city bank and deposited for safe keeping. It is not, however, the rapid transfer of wealth from the country to the city that causes this great alarm: it is the almost universal removal of the leaders of men and the captains of industry from the country to the city. This disorganizes and cripples the country, weakens its effective forces and lowers its civilization.

Realizing what must be the effect upon our national life, if this is allowed to continue, patriotic men everywhere are attempting to provide a remedy. Just at present a remedy quite generally accepted is the giving of instruction in agriculture in the secondary schools. Let us weigh the reasons assigned for the addition of the study of agriculture to the high school curriculum.

First, it is claimed that instruction in agriculture will promote, and possibly create, a love for the soil, and the things it produces, and give to the pupil a tendency to the life on the farm. There may be a little of truth in this, but not much. All studies in the secondary schools are largely elementary, and are expected only

to prepare the student for wider investigations in the future and are scarcely carried far enough to create tendencies. If they give direction, as a whole they point so many different ways that one counterbalances the others. A love for the soil is not created or enhanced by the study of a book on agriculture, or any pedagogic lessons in soil manipulation. It is founded on an intelligent and successful farm life and on the environments of an orderly and thrifty country home. The pupil at this stage is not thinking about tendencies any more than the nursing child thinks about growing. He is simply developing. The factors which determine our ultimate choice of farm life are rarely scholastic tendencies, but matter of fact business relations or opportunities. It is doubtful whether the knowledge acquired in the high schools would be an influential factor in determining the choice of a rural life once in a thousand instances.

We are liable to the same erroneous conclusions here that were entertained towards agricultural colleges, and were influential in establishing them, to-wit, that they would lead to the choice of a rural occupation and promote a higher life upon the farm. Agricultural colleges have done a great work and will ultimately become more useful to the world, but if they have been influential in directing the sons and daughters of the farmers to the farm or have exerted their educational forces to increase the number of practical farmers, it is not generally known. They have been even more potent than the universities in transferring bright young men from the farms to other vocations.

The second reason offered is that such instruction will make better and more successful farmers. Such assertions arise from a complete misapprehension of what the science of agriculture is. It is entirely distinct from botany, chemistry and the sciences related to it. As a science it has to do with the organic conditions and manipulations of soils, how to feed them with plant food and fertilizers. It deals with the propagation of plants and the best methods of promoting their growth, with the selection, preservation and germination of seeds, with pomology, entomology, animal husbandry and kindred subjects. A man may be well versed in all the sciences that relate to agriculture and be master of the things I have enumerated as belonging to agriculture, and yet be a failure as a farmer. There is a business side to farming and it