Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1915 — With the Big Crowd. [ARTICLE]

With the Big Crowd.

There is something in a mob of men which does not belong to them, taken separately—a violence, a willfulness, which persuade them to do what they never would have done had they not been conglomerated into an insensate mass.

The French Revolution will provide the curious with as many examples of the crimes committed by the crowd aB they could wish. When the blameless and kindly M. de Launay, governor of the Bastille, was decapitated, the deed was done by a mere sightseer, who,- breathing the spirit of the Crowd, committed a foul and purposeless murder, of which, by himself, he would have been wholly incapable. But the Crowd, tyrannical as it is, has one limitation—it wants to be led. It asks for someone who can Impose upon it It does not want great but well-advertised men.