But the worst feature of all in this Springfield lynching was the apathy of the public. No one really seemed to care. A "nigger" had been hanged: what of it? But the law itself had been lynched. What of that? I had just come from the South, where I had found the people of several lynching towns in a state of deep excitement--moral excitement if you like, thinking about this problem, quarrelling about it, expelling men from the church, impeaching sheriffs, dishonourably discharging whole militia companies. Here in Springfield, I found cold apathy, except for a few fine citizens, one of whom, City Solicitor Stewart L. Tatum, promptly offered his services to the sheriff and assisted in a vain effort to remove the Negro in a closed carriage and afterward at the risk of personal assault earnestly attempted to defeat the purposes of the mob. Another of these citizens, the Rev. Father Cogan, pleaded with the mob on the second night of the rioting at risk to himself; another withdrew from the militia company because it had not done its duty. And afterward the city officials were stirred by the faintest of faint spasms of righteousness: some of the Negro saloons were closed up, but within a month, the most notorious of all the dive-keepers, Hurley, the Negro political boss, was permitted to open an establishment--through the medium of a brother-in-law! If there ever was an example of good citizenship lying flat on its back with political corruption squatting on its neck, Springfield furnished an example of that condition. There was no reconstructive movement, no rising and organisation of the better sort of citizens. Negro dives gradually reopened, the same corrupt politics continued: and the result was logical and inevitable. About two years later, in February, 1906, another race riot broke out in Springfield--worse in some ways than the first. On February 26th, Martin M. Davis, a white brakeman, was shot in the railroad yards near a row of notorious Negro houses, by Edward Dean, a coloured man. The Negro was at once removed from the city and a mob which had gathered in anticipation of another lynching, when it was cheated of its victim, set fire to a number of houses in the Negro settlement. The militia was at once called out, but the following night the mob gathered as before and visiting the Negro settlement, tried to set fire to other buildings.