The burning of Samuel Hose, or, to give his right name, Samuel Wilkes, gave to the United States the distinction of having burned alive seven human beings during the past ten years. The details of this deed of unspeakable barbarism have shocked the civilized world, for it is conceded universally that no other nation on earth, civilized or savage, has put to death any human being with such atrocious cruelty as that inflicted upon Samuel Hose by the Christian white people of Georgia. The charge is generally made that lynch law is condemned by the best white people of the South, and that lynching is the work of the lowest and lawless class. Those who seek the truth know the fact to be, that all classes are equally guilty, for what the one class does the other encourages, excuses and condones. This was clearly shown in the burning of Hose. This awful deed was suggested, encouraged and made possible by the daily press of Atlanta, Georgia, until the burning actually occurred, and then it immediately condoned the burning by a hysterical plea to “consider the facts.” Samuel Hose killed Alfred Cranford Wednesday afternoon, April 12, 1899, in a dispute over wages due Hose. The dispatch which announced the killing of Cranford stated that Hose had assaulted Mrs. Cranford and that bloodhounds had been put on his track. The next day the Atlanta Constitution, in glaring double headlines, predicted a lynching and suggested burning at the stake. This it repeated in the body of the dispatch in the following language: “When Hose is caught he will either be lynched and his body riddled with bullets or he will be burned at the stake.” And further in the same issue the Constitution suggests torture in these words: “There have been whisperings of burning at the stake and of torturing the fellow, and so great is the excitement, and so high the indignation, that this is among the possibilities.” In the issue of the 15th, in another double-column display heading, the Constitution announces: “Negro will probably be burned,” and in the body of the dispatch burning and torture is confidently predicted in these words: “Several modes of death have been suggested for him, but it seems to be the universal opinion that he will be burned at the stake and probably tortured before burned.” The next day, April 16th, the double-column head still does its inflammatory work. Never a word for law and order, but daily encouragement for burning. The headlines read: “Excitement still continues intense, and it is openly declared that if Sam Hose is brought in alive he will be burned,” and in the dispatch it is said: “The residents have shown no disposition to abandon the search in the immediate neighborhood of Palmetto; their ardor has in no degree cooled, and if Sam Hose is brought here by his captors he will be publicly burned at the stake as an example to members of his race who are said to have been causing the residents of this vicinity trouble for some time.”