Word: crimes
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...With the crime statistics for 1921 completed, the Dyer Bill, aimed to end lynching, becomes a prominent issue. The figures reveal not only that this form of public murder has increased during the past year; they show that during the last thirty-six years well over four thousand men in this country have been deliberately taken from the shelter of justice and put to death at the hands of angry mobs. Such a record compares only too favorably with the list of actual murders...
Whether the Dyer Bill, or any man-made law, can cure an ill in the very nature of man, is a matter of doubt. When a negro has committed the crime of assault the usual cause of lynchings--the white man's instinct tells him that no penalty can be too severe, and an appeal to reason is futile. His natural resentment, fired by mob spirit and an underlying antagonism to the negro race, flares up uncontrolled. No matter how thoroughly he may agree, in a dispassionate mood, to every man's right of fair trial; no matter how well...
...Representatives, just before Christmas, blocked action on the Dyer Bill, they professed to object only to its form; but as a matter of fact, underneath their arguments was a defense of the practice itself. Such an attitude, to the unprejudiced, can admit of no defense. Lynching is a flagrant crime against reason and justice. It stands as a symbol of America's barbarism in the eyes of civilized nations. President Harding, not long ago, stated his hopes for the negro race, with emphasis on their right to equal justice. As long as lynching persists, that right is denied them...
...movies have friends and foes of all degrees, from the optimist who says they are an added force of enlightenment, to the lugubrious individual who traces to them all the evils of a crime-ridden world. To suppose that a man, simply because he has seen a sensational movie, will be impelled to go home and murder his grandparents for their inheritance, elope with his neighbor's wife, and wreck two trains and a house in the process, is patently ridiculous. Yet there is a grain of truth in the allegation which cannot be denied--many movies of today...
...These little irregularities are always a temptation for the would-be humorist, and the editors were tempted to use a red-ink screamer headline, with three-column photographs of the culprits. But the present case in by no means a matter for jest. The backwash of a world-wide crime wave has reached our peaceful community, and the list of victims is growing daily. Reports of petty and larger thefts come in steadily; swindling is not uncommon; suspicious characters are frequently seen about the dormitories...