ide is not declared murder--when courts of
justice, though sure to inflict the highest penalty in his case, are
found to be too slow, and he is dragged forth and slain, unshrived and
unshriven, as if he were a monstrous wild beast of whose presence earth
could not be rid too quickly."[51]

The social degradation of the Negro is the greatest factor contributive
to this high criminal record. We naturally associate poverty,
ignorance, and crime as being indissolubly connected. The Negroes
represent the stratum of society which commits the bulk of crime the
world over. If we exchange places the same story would be narrated of
the whites. The census records nowhere show that there is any connection
between crime and race, but between crime and condition.

The Negro has a higher criminal record than the Caucasian, it is true,
but so has the foreigner a greater average than the native whites. The
strongest possible argument in this connection rests upon the fact that
the presence of a large number of Negroes in any community does not
increase its total criminal average. The North Atlantic division,
including the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, has a
criminal record of 833.1 to the million, while the South Atlantic
division, including the states of the Southern Atlantic coast shows a
record of 831.7. The Western division has an average of 1300. The
section that has the fewest Negroes has the highest average, and the
states that have the largest quota of blacks show the lowest criminal
rates. If we compare state with state the same interesting results are
revealed. The criminal record of New York (million basis) is 1369, of
South Carolina 702.6, of California 1703, of Alabama 720.1.

But, says the objector, a difference in the rigidity of the enforcement
of the law may account in some measure for this disparity. Let us then
take the city of Washington, one-third of whose population are Negroes,
and compare its police reports with those of Boston, whose Negro element
is a negligible fraction. It will be conceded, I think, that the
enforcement of law in both cities is rigid. The major of police for the
District of Columbia, in his last report remarks: "Those familiar with
the conduct of police affairs in this country generally contend that
there is a constant increase of crime; that it keeps pace with the
growing population. While such may