How a murder cries out! The murderer fled in the darkness but it was as if he left great footprints. The next day, in Huntsville, the law laid its hand on his shoulder. Now, Huntsville is one of the best cities in Alabama. No other city, perhaps, preserves more of the aristocratic habiliments of the older South. It was the first capital of the state. Seven governors lie buried in its cemetery; its county house, its bank, some of its residences are noble examples of the architecture of the ante-bellum South. And while preserving these evidences of the wealth and refinement of an older civilisation, few cities in the South have responded more vigorously to the new impulses of progress and development. Its growth during the last few years has been little short of amazing. Northern capital has come in; nine cotton-mills have been built, drawing a large increase of population, and stimulating the development of the country in every direction. It is a fine, orderly, progressive city--intensely American, ambitious, self-respecting. _Relation of Lynching to Business Success_ Huntsville has had its share of lynchings in the past. Within twenty years seven Negroes and one white man had been the victims of mobs in Madison County. The best citizens knew what a lynching meant; they knew how the mob began, and what invariably followed its excesses, and they wanted no more such horrors. But this revolt was not wholly moral. With awakening industrial ambition the people realised that disorder had a tendency to frighten away capital, stop immigration, and retard development generally. Good business demands good order. This feeling has been expressed in various forms and through many channels. It existed in Statesboro, but it was by no means as vigorous as in this manufacturing city of Huntsville. We find, for instance, Congressman Richardson of Alabama, a citizen of Huntsville, saying in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives: "Why, Mr. Chairman, we have more reason in the South to observe the law and do what is right than any other section of this Union." The Atlanta _Constitution_ presents the same view in vigorous language: Aside entirely from the consideration of the evil effects of the mob spirit in breeding general disrespect for the law, and aside from the question of the inevitable brutalising effect of lynching upon those who are spectators--and the effect goes even further--the practical question arises: Can we at the South afford it? Is there any use blinding ourselves to the fact, patent to everybody, that it is this sort of thing that has kept hundreds of thousands of desirable immigrants from coming to the Southern states? _Story of a Bold Judge_