[213]. Henry M. Boies has shown from the Tribune record of murders that there has been, within the last twenty years, “an alarming increase of homicides, accompanied by a proportionate decrease of executions by law and lynching.”—“Science of Penology” (1901), p. 120.
[214]. See W. S. Drewry: “Slave Insurrections in Virginia” (1900), pp. 22–25.
[215]. The liberty has been taken of coining this word to designate the cause for lynching the class of individuals known as desperadoes. No other word seems to express the idea so clearly. The word “brigandage” is too narrow in meaning and too nearly obsolete; the word “outlawry” is not sufficiently inclusive and is generally used only in its technical sense.
[216]. “Statistics and Sociology” (1900), p. 271.
[217]. This may be taken as an indication of the trustworthiness of the Tribune record of lynchings as a basis for statistical investigation.
[219]. See the daily issues from July 23 to July 27, 1886.
[220]. These figures are taken from the Twelfth Census, where the term “illiterates” is used to designate all persons ten years of age and over who can neither read nor write, or who can read but cannot write.
[221]. The figures given by the Twelfth Census were used. The figures of the Eleventh Census would be more nearly typical for the period under consideration than those of the Twelfth Census, but a difficulty was met with in an attempt to use them, owing to the fact that new counties have been formed since 1890. It was found that counties in which lynchings have occurred did not appear at all in the Eleventh Census, and that for the sake of completeness it was necessary to use the Twelfth Census.
[222]. Alfred Holt Stone, In a paper read before the American Economic Association in December, 1901, attributed the amicable relations existing between the whites and the negroes in the Yazoo-Mississippi delta to the absence of a white laboring class, particularly of field laborers. In his opinion one of the gravest causes of trouble between the two races is contact on a common industrial plane.—“Publications of the American Economic Association,” February, 1902 (3d Ser., Vol. III, No. 1, p. 235).