MAN'S GUST FOR GORE.
HON. CHAS. P. JOHNSON has written for the Globe-Democrat
an article that will doubtless receive the careful
consideration of every sociologist, for he therein assumes that
man's instincts are as brutal and bloody to-day as in those
far times when, clad only in his "thick natural fell," and
armed with a stone, he struggled for food with the wild
beasts of the forest—that the prevalence of lynchings is
not due to incompetency of our criminal courts, but to an
alarming revival of savagery in man himself. He declares
that our courts are more effective than ever before, but
that Judge Lynch continues active without other cause
than the inability of the people to restrain their murderous
proclivities. He assures us that the entire suppression of
the savage instinct is impossible by any civilization whatever,
and adds that "its control and regulation is as difficult
to-day as it has been at any period since the historical
birth of man." Why this is so he does not directly say,
but the following paragraph is significant:
"Perhaps the statesmanship which looks solely to the
development of our material resources and the accumulation
of wealth is overlooking the growth and development
of many social vices which may yet engulf us in a vortex
of anarchical passion or governmental revolution."
Thus Mr. Johnson endorses the position of the ICONOCLAST
that the getting of gain should not constitute the
sole aim of man; that society cannot long exist with self-interest for "sole nexus," as the French physiocrats would
say—that the worship of Mammon is dragging us back to
barbarism. It is quite true that man's savage instincts
cannot be wholly eradicated; and it is likewise true that
could you drain all the Berserker out of his blood he would
sink to the level of an emasculated simian. A man in whom
there's no latent savagery were equivalent to mint julep
in which buttermilk were used as a succedaneum for bourbon.
Life, we are told, is "a battle and a march," and an
indispensable prerequisite for such stubborn work, call
it by what name you will, is but a refinement of the
barbaric gust for blood. Whether he be poet or philosopher,
priest or prophet, it is the combative man—the man who
would find a wild fierce joy in a bayonet charge—who wins
new territory from the powers of Darkness and the Devil.
Man
is a savage, and civilization but a cloak with which
he covers his ferocity as best he can. If the cloak be scant
—as with the Turk—or frayed by time—as with the
Spaniard—we may expect to catch frequent and shocking
glimpses of the predacious animal. But Mr. Johnson is
mistaken in supposing that the lynchings of which he
complains evidence an abnormal thirst for blood on the
part of the American people. He says:
"As the masses of ancient Rome enjoyed the carnage of
the amphi-theater; as the populace of Paris crowded with
eager avidity around the guillotine to see the blood gush
from the heads and trunks of the victims of the revolutionary
tribunal; as the Spaniard in holiday attire followed
over the plaza the procession and rapturously looked
upon the execution of the wretches of the auto da fe; as
in all ages the spirit of savagery has made men to enjoy
scenes of suffering, brutality and death—so does the
modern mob look with frenzied delight upon like exhibitions
to-day."
For a man so erudite and earnest, Mr. Johnson comes
painfully near being ridiculous. The evidence is ample
that never since the first settlement of this country have
the people found less pleasure in the effusion of blood and
scenes of brutality. Instead of the savage instinct
becoming dominant, we are fairly open to the charge of
effeminacy, of super-estheticism. Our very sports are
becoming namby pamby as those of the Bengalese, the
element of danger which gave zest to them in auld lang
syne being all but eliminated. Bear-baiting, cocking-mains, shin-kicking, bulldog-fighting, etc., all greatly
enjoyed by the general public a generation or so ago, are
now quite generally tabood. Many of us can remember
when pugilism was practiced with bare-knuckles and every
fight to a finish; it is practiced now with feather pillows
"for points," and under police supervision. About the
only game left us that is more dangerous than playing
Presbyterian billards with an old maid from Boston is
college football, and even that will soon be stripped of its
vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers
quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces;
now disagreements involving even family honor are carried
into the courts—the bloody Code Duello has been relegated
to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our
Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most
bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the
Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying
its poor self sick because some peripatetic Ananias
intimated to an Eastern reporter that our wildest and wooliest
cowboys would even think of shooting the pigtail off a
Chinaman bowling along on a bike. Our governor earned
the title of "heroic young Christian" by calling a special
session of the legislature to prevent Prof. Fitzsimmons
giving it to Prof. Corbett "in de slats" with a buggy
cushion—was re-elected on the proposition that a boxing-match is "brutal"—which proves that our people are not
ahunger and athirst for gore, do not yearn for the sickening
scenes of the Roman amphitheatre, where holy virgins
by turning their thumbs up or down, decided questions of
life and death. "Bloodthirsty?" Good Lord! The
average American would grow sick at the stomach if
required to slaughter a pullet with which to regale the palate
of his favorite preacher. During the past two decades
we have practically become Quakers, and now suffer
foreign powers to vent their rheum upon us and rub it
in, because to maintain our dignity might precipitate a
war, and bloodshed is so very brutal. Mr. Johnson seems
to imagine that the usual method of procedure in Judge
Lynch's court is for the mob to trample its victim to
death, bray him in a mortar, kerosene him and set him on
fire, then dance the carmagnole around his flaming carcass.
This, I am pleased to remark, is simply a mid-day nightmare
which should be subjected to hydropathic treatment,
reinforced with cracked ice and bromo-seltzer. As a rule
lynchings are conducted in quite as orderly and humane a
manner as legal esecutions. It is true that cases have
occurred, when the public patience had become exhausted
by repeated offenses, or the crime committed was peculiarly
atrocious, wherein respectable God-fearing men were seized
with a murderous frenzy, and whole communities noted for
their culture, united in torturing or burning at the state
the object of their displeasure; but these were usually
instances where failure to enforce the law was notorious, or
it did not provide an adequate penalty. The courts
imprison the man who steals a mule, or even a loaf of bread
to feed a starving family. They hang the man who in a
fit of rage of jealousy or drunken frenzy commits a homicide:
they can do no more to the brutal buck negro who
ravishes and murders a white babe—so Judge Lynch takes
cognizance of his case and builds for him a beautiful
bonfire; but the average lynching appeals no more strongly
to the savage instincts of man than does a hanging by the
sheriff. Then, it may be asked, why do lynchings occur.
I have treated this subject at considerable length in former
issues of the ICONOCLAST, hence will but recapitulate here
and add a few observations suggested by Mr. Johnson's
very able but sadly mistaken article. Lynchings occur
because, whatsoever be the efficiency of our courts, they are
a trifle shy of public confidence; because there are some
offenses for which the statutes do not provide adequate
penalties; because the people insist that when a heinous
crime is committed punishment follow fast upon the
offense instead of being delayed by a costly circumlocution
office and perhaps altogether defeated by skillful attorneys
—men ready to put their eloquence and tears on tap in
the interest of worse criminals. I will not take issue with
so distinguished an authority as Mr. Johnson regarding
the competency of our courts to deal with criminals in
accordance with the laws of the land; but the people see
that despite the vigilance of officers, the erudition of
judges and the industries of juries, murders multiply,
rapes increase and portable property remains at the mercy
of the marauder. If my memory of statistics does not
mislead me, we have in the United States something like
10,000 homicides per annum, while every newspaper teems
with accounts of robbery and rape. When we consider
this in connection with the further fact that the courts
continue to increase in cost—are already a veritable Old
Man of the Sea about the neck of the Industrial Sinbad—
can we wonder at the impatience of the people? But there
is another feature which Mr. Johnson has quite overlooked
in his vision of a brutal mob drunk with blood—like most
lawyers, he stands too close to his subject to see more than
one side, views it from beneath rather than from above.
We set a higher value on human life than did our ancestors
of the old dueling days. This may be called the Age of
Woman—the era of her apothesis. She occupies a higher
intellectual, social and political level than ever before in
human history, and as she increases in importance crimes
against her person assume more gravity. A generation
ago such a thing as the criminal assault of a white woman
by a negro was almost unknown, but now it is of every day
occurrence; thus as womanhood becomes more sacred in
our eyes it is subjected to fouler insult. Nor is this all:
The American people are becoming every year more
mercurial. The whole trend of our civilization—of our
education, our business, even our religion—is to make us
neurotic, excitable, impatient. In our cooler moments we enact
laws expressive of mistaken mercy rather than of unflinching
justice. Some of the states have even abolished capital
punishment and in but one can a brute be tied up and
whipped for the cowardly crime of wife-beating. We
establish courts rather to acquit than to convict by
disqualifying intelligence for jury service and enforcing the
stupid unit rule. We provide convicts with comforts
unknown to millions of honest working men and regard them
as poor unfortunates to be "reformed rather than as
malefactors to be punished. And when our misguided
mercy has borne its legitimate fruit we take fire, curse the
laws and the courts, seize and hang the offender, and have
the satisfaction of knowing that there's one less monster
alive in the land. Mr. Johnson suggests no remedy for
what he regards as the evil of the age, and is therefore
like unto the doctor who volunteers the entirely superfluous
information that you "have a misery in your innards,"
but provides neither pill nor poultice. As Judge
Lynch probably makes fewer mistakes than do the courts;
as those he hangs usually deserve hemp and he renders no
bill of costs to the country; and as the people are the
creators and not the creatures of the courts, I am not
particularly interested in his suppression, notwithstanding
the fact that he seriously interferes with the material
welfare of the professional juror and my lawyer friends.
But were I duly ordained to perform that duty I would
not begin by creating new deputies or calling out local
militia companies to shoot down their neighbors and
friends, to protect the miserable carcass of a rape-fiend.
I would wipe out our entire penal code and frame a new
one in which there would be no comfortable penitentiaries.
If a man were found guilty of rape or homicide I'd
promptly hang him, if of a less heinous offense I'd give
him stripes proportionate to his crime and turn him loose
to earn a livelihood and thus prevent his family becoming
a public burden. For the second offense in crimes like
forgery, perjury, theft, arson, etc., I'd resort to the
rope. I would abolish fines in misdemeanor cases, thereby
putting the rich and poor on a parity, and set the offenders
in the stocks. I'd get rid of the costly delays which are
the chief cause of lynchings, by elective jurors and the
majority rule, by appointing one man well learned in the
law to see that all the evidence was properly placed before
the court, and advise the rest of the legal fraternity now
making heaven and earth resound with their eloquence and
weeping crocodile tears at so much per wope, that it were
better to make two fat shoats flourish where one hazel-splitter pined in the hitherto, than to employ their talents
and energies securing the conviction of the innocent and
the aquittal of the guilty. By such a system almost any
criminal case could be fairly tried in a couple of hours.
If the defendant desired to appeal from the sentence of
the court, instead of sending the case up to a higher
tribunal thereby entailing heavy cost and vexatious delay, I
would empanel a new jury then and there, composed of
reputable citizens of the community, retry the case, and if
the first verdict was confirmed, the sentence should be
executed within the hour. The quicker the courts "get
action" on an offender the more terror they inspire in the
criminal classes and the better they please the people. If
a murderer or rape-fiend captured at daylight could be
fairly tried and executed by sundown Judge Lynch would
speedily find himself without an occupation.