════════════╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═══╤═════ │’96│’97│’98│’99│’00│’01│’02│’03│Total ────────────┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───── Southern │ 93│113│ 85│ 70│ 83│ 93│ 73│ 75│ 1997 States │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Western │ 7│ 11│ 8│ 4│ 4│ 10│ 5│ 8│ 363 States │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Eastern │ 3│ 3│ 2│ 1│ 2│ 1│ 4│ 4│ 105 States │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ────────────┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───── Total │103│127│ 95│ 75│ 89│104│ 82│ 87│ 2465 ════════════╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═══╧═════ If much that has been said and written in recent years on the subject of lynching is true; if the presence of the colored race, because of the character of the crimes which negroes commit, is largely responsible for the practice of lynching; if the immigration into this country of “the scum of Europe” is also responsible for the practice; if lynching is, in addition, a relic of barbarism and a sign of degeneracy in American civilization,—then there ought to be some correlation between the distribution of lynchings and the proportion of the white element to the colored and the foreign elements in the population, and also between the distribution of lynchings and the degree of illiteracy in the population. With this idea in mind an attempt has been made to find out whether any such correlations exist with reference to the lynchings that have occurred during the last twenty-two years in the Southern Group of States and in the three States of the Eastern Group in which lynchings have been most numerous. In the following table the percentage which the total number of lynchings bears to the total population of these several States has been placed alongside the percentage of the negroes in the population, the percentage of foreign born in the population, and the percentage of illiterates in the population. In the same table also there have been given the percentage of the persons lynched in these several States who were whites, and the percentage of the persons lynched who were negroes.