If the States had the power to train or even to enforce habits of industry and thrift upon the shiftless, idle, and vicious Negroes it would undoubtedly result in measureless benefit to both white and black. Liberty should not be made a “fetish.” If the Negro has rights that should not be abridged, so have the white people rights and _lives_ that should not be endangered. The law-abiding many have the right to protection from the criminal few—actual or incipient. With the adoption of some such scheme the Negro might gradually cease to be a menace to the white race. Again, so often the Negro leaders of the Negro race are merely blind leaders of the blind,—entirely lacking in breadth of view, often discouraging in their race what they should encourage and encouraging what they should discourage as the following quotation may indicate: “‘Make lynching a Federal crime, and stop turning the murderers over to local authorities who are in sympathy with them,’ demanded Dr. W. T. Vernon, of Memphis, Tenn., before 15,000 Negroes, who were celebrating the twenty-fifth quadrennial Conference of the African M. E. Church in Convention Hall, Broad street and Allegheny Avenue, yesterday.”[99:24] Such talk as this serves to promote Negro crime. If instead of Negro leaders writing articles for magazines and Negro papers, in sermons in Negro churches, and in addresses before Negro conventions denouncing the whites for protecting themselves against Negro crime in their own way, could realize that it is not so much the black skin as what sort of man the black skin covers, that counts, would demonstrate to their black brothers that they themselves are the sinners rather than the sinned against, that they are the transgressors rather than otherwise, they might accomplish much toward lessening Negro crime. If such leaders would use their influence to the utmost to make their race as law-abiding as the whites, and should bring it about, it is hardly likely that then they would need to complain that their race is imposed upon. But if they were, at least, there would be more force in their complaint. But so long as the Negro race commits its present amount of crime, the complaint against unfair treatment is more than childish. FOOTNOTES: [76:1] Both Tables I and II have reference to penetentiaries, no account being taken of other penal institutions. The calculations are based upon the census of 1910 and penitentiary reports of the same year, or thereabouts, but some prison statistics for other years are also given. [77:2] Some State penitentiary reports give the number of prisoners on hand at a certain time, others simply those committed during a period of time, while a few reports give both items.