CRIME: Lesson Learned

One day last week Lloyd Warner, a 19-year-old Negro of St. Joseph, Mo. confessed to raping a young white woman in an alley after binding her with her stockings. The judge who heard his prompt confession observed that there was no necessity to "hurry things." But in a distinctly hurrying mood was the crowd which began gathering outside St. Joseph's jail and court house that evening. When some rivermen appeared to take command of the mob, it surged into the court house, through the sheriff's living quarters, destroying everything before it. Governor Park ordered out the local militia tank company. Tankmen were lifted bodily out of their iron nests. After a four-hour siege, Sheriff Otto Theisen emerged from his smoky barricade.

"If you keep quiet and be careful," shouted he, "you can have the Negro in two minutes. There's no use tearing down any more. I can't hold out. I've never known an Irishman to lick a Dutchman before, but there are too many Irishmen here for me."

The good-natured officer then retired. With the help of his own guards he tore the gibbering black from his cell. Warner clung to the bars, to the railings of stairs, to doors, to the ground, to people, to anything he could lay his bleeding hands on. At the end of a rope he was hoisted into a tree. His gasoline-soaked clothing was touched into flame which cast an ugly glow upon the faces of a mob of 7,000 men, women & children.

Many & many a citizen throughout the land held Governor James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. of California directly responsible for Negro Warner's death. Week before, Governor Rolph had congratulated the "patriotic citizens" of San Jose for lynching John Holmes and Thomas H. Thurmond who had confessed to the murderous kidnapping of Brooke Hart. California, boasted its Governor, had given the rest of the Union a "lesson" in dealing with criminals (TIME. Dec. 4). Missouri, it seemed, had been quick to learn.

"Ridiculous," snorted Governor Rolph at charges of his culpability in the Missouri affray. "The cases are not at all parallel." But no sooner had he riposted that assault than he found himself attacked from another quarter. Twenty-five Californians including Herbert Hoover of Palo Alto, signed a statement declaring Governor Rolph's attitude a "humiliation and shame" to the State.

Warming to a side-fight, "Sunny Jim" Rolph pointedly cracked back at the onetime President of the U. S.: "If troops had been called out [to defend Lynchees Holmes & Thurmond], hundreds of innocent citizens might have been mowed down. There was no shooting such as that which occurred near the White House during the Bonus March trouble."

"Not a single shot was fired," hotly replied Mr. Hoover, breaking silence for the first time on last year's Battle of Anacostia Flats, "not a single person was injured by the troops called out in Washington in response to the appeal of local authorities. The troops ended the bloodshed which was then in progress through conflicts between rioters and police. The issue here is plain and not to be obscured by such misstatements."