Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1892 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

rylng enterprise u Mtle too far. Thq dangerous poisoning of several Chicago children who picked up and ate the contents of sample boxes thus distributed was a very natural consequence of the proceeding. There are no more enterprising advertisers than the patent medicine men, and the immense fortunes quickly gained in that line of business prove the wisdom of the liberal policy which they pursue. Distributing samples of a nostrum, however, is a dangerous proceeding, and one that should not be tolerated.

The story ot the lynching of Joseph Lyttle by a mob of “best citizens” at Findlay, Ohio, is disgraceful and ridiculous. Disgraceful to the community in which the outrage was perpetrated, and ridiculous in its attempt to deceive the public as to the character of the men engaged in it. Neither in Ohio nor elsewhere do "best citizens” become members of Judge Lynch’s court. They do not even in Mississippi. It is doubtful if ever since the days of the famous and necessary “vigilance committee” of San Francisco any body of “best citizens” has taken the law into its own hands. A body of well-to-do citizens or of politically aspiring citizens may have sat as jurors or acted as executioners of Judge Lynch, but investigation would make it appear that they were men better known to the saloonkeepers than to the preachers. There was not the slightest provocation to mob violence in the Findlay case. A great crime had been committed, the criminal was under arrest, the court in which he was to be tried was honest, the law was adequate to the heinous degree of the crime. In due course the criminal wmuld have been executed decently and in order. The act of the mob fell little short of the guilt of the crime which it pretended to punish. The citizens of Findlay owe it to their good name to aid the State's attorney in the detection and punishment of the leaders of the mob. Any kind of law, even lynch law. is better than no law, but in Ohio the best law is in full force. There is no danger of a culprit going acquit in Ohio when the evidence is plain against him. The criminal in the case under notice was not wealthy, not surrounded by political influence, not in any way possessed of advantages that could have given him an unfair chance in his struggle with the law. The outrageous conduct of the mob was more in aceord with the social conditions of Arkansas than Ohio.

Crimes against nature are not confined to barbarians. Not even Russia’s Czar may assume a monopoly of barbarity in view of the persistence of the New York authorities in the barbarous practice of torturing persons convicted of murder in that commonwealth. A convicted murderer was recently executed in Sing Sing under circumstances of such a horrible nature as to have shocked even those whose sensibilities have been dulled by long experience. The victim was strapped to the chair while a “skilled electrician” made four experiments to prove the force of his machine. Three times the current was turned on, and three times the victim writhed in agony, only to recover consciousness and look with appealing eyes upon his tormentors. At last the tragedy was completed, and the “skilled electrician” declared that the “execution had been a success.” It is time for the country to rebel against the repetition of these scenes. The practice of legal murder is sufficiently odious without the added outrage of torture to the victim. The right of the State to take life is more than questionable. Its right to torture under pretense of execution is not to be accepted in this country. Every execution by electricity in New York has exposed the fact that electricians have not grasped the first ‘principles of what they term a science. They are totally ignorant of the action of electricity, though prolific in the manufacture of high-sounding terms to conceal their lack of information. They prate of “ohms” and “volts,” while confessing among themselves that the words convey no meaning. They have disgraced the nation by their insistence upon instituting a barbarous practice of legal killing by a force they do not understand, turning the action of the State into a means of advertising their wares and incompetence. If the present Legislature of New York adjourns without repealing the present law its members should be held up to the scorn of the civilized world.