The better element in the South, however, opposes mob violence, and this opposition is growing stronger and more purposeful. Associations have been formed to oppose mob rule and to punish participants. Where reputable citizens are lukewarm it is largely because they have not realized that the old tradition that lynching is the proper remedy for rape cannot stand. If sudden, sharp retribution were inflicted upon absolute proof, only for this one cause, it is doubtful whether much effective opposition could be enlisted. Yet wiser men have seen defiance of law fail to stop crime, have seen mobs act upon suspicions afterward proved groundless, have seen mob action widely extended, and have seen the growth of a spirit of lawlessness. Where one mob has had its way, another is always more easily aroused, and soon the administration of the law becomes a farce. In some years hardly a third of the victims of this summary process have been charged with rape or intent to commit rape. As a consequence the sentiment that the law should take its course in every case is steadily growing. ¹ ¹ The statistics on lynching do not always agree. Those compiled at Tuskegee Institute list 38 cases for 1917 and 62 for 1918. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in its report Thirty Years of Lynching (1919) reports 67 cases for 1918, and 325 cases for the five-year period ending with 1918, of which 304 are said to have occurred in the South. Though mob fury has broken out on occasion in every Southern State, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina are measurably free from such visitations. Over considerable periods of time, Georgia comes unenviably first, followed by Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. These four States have furnished a large majority of the lynchings. The other States range between the two groups, though in proportion to the negro element in its population Oklahoma has had a disproportionate share. It may be said that the lynchings occur chiefly in those sections or counties where the numbers of whites and negroes are nearly equal. They are fewer in the black belt and in those counties and States where whites are in an overwhelming majority.