Since the negroes were made free American citizens a large class of the younger generation has become utterly shiftless and worthless, many of them being vicious and dangerous individuals in a community. Professor DuBois, than whom there is probably no man better qualified to make a careful and conservative estimate, says that at least nine per cent of the county black population in the Black Belt are thoroughly lewd and vicious.[346] Lynching has been resorted to by the whites not merely to wreak vengeance, but to terrorize and restrain this lawless element in the negro population. Among the Southern people the conviction is general that terror is the only restraining influence that can be brought to bear upon vicious negroes. The negroes fear nothing so much as force, and should they once get the notion that there is a reasonable hope of escape from punishment, the whites in many parts of the South would be at their mercy.[347] There is no evidence, however, to show that the punishment of negroes by mob violence tends to decrease lawlessness among the negroes, or even tends to restrain the vicious element from committing offenses against the whites. On the contrary, lawlessness seems to beget lawlessness and the publicity given to revolting crimes by lynching the perpetrators of them seems really to incite others to commit similar crimes, or at least suggests to others like crimes when opportunity offers. The frightful tortures and the burnings which have taken place in the last few years in connection with the lynching of negroes is partly to be accounted for by the fact that lynchings are now carried on by a lower class of whites than formerly.[348] The power of suggestion as an incentive to crime is also evident in this barbarous conduct of lynching mobs. The publicity given in the newspapers, particularly the sensational ones, to the details of such tragic scenes has undoubtedly been largely responsible for the frequency of their recurrence.[349] The relations between the younger generations of the two races are, besides, much less cordial and amicable than were those which existed between the generations immediately preceding; there is less of a mutual understanding. The relation of master and slave has been destroyed and no new relation has yet been firmly established in its place. In the process of adjustment to a new order of things there has been constant friction between the two races, and when an offense has been committed upon a white person by a negro, particularly if an assault has been made upon the person of a white woman or child, the exasperation of the whites has known scarcely any bounds.