Newspaper Page Text
Atlanta preachers, and the Rabbi Berkowitz ?
The Rabbi says that the State of Georgia
is on trial.
For what? And before whom?
She is arraigned because the evidence of a
negro witness was the corner-stone of the
case Frank—the negro being a daily
associate of Frank at the 'place of the crime,
and nearer to him, it seems, than any one else
employed there.
Other witnesses, white and unimpeachable,
established facts which put Frank on the
open road to the crime: other witnesses, white
and unimpeachable, pointed to the little girl,
as one girl at the factory who had repulsed.
Frank’s overtures—therefore, the one girl who
had inflamed his desire to possess her.
Other witnesses, white and unimpeachable,
put that lovely and innocent maid into
Frank’s keeping in such away that a voice
from on high might have echoed the terrible
question that rang upon the outskirts of Eden
—“IFZL47’ HAVE YOU DONE WITH
HER?
Where is Mary Phagan?
She went to you: she was received by you
in your office: she was left in your hands by
z the friend who went there with her: she was
never again seen alive: what did you do with
her ?
“‘CAIN, WHERE IS THY
BROTHER?” '
And the brother was dead; and upon his
blood-stained face rained the first tears of the
first parents, as the first Murder and the first
Death stalked, red-handed, into the world.
-Great God ! That any sane man could fol
low the evidence which put into Frank's
power, the girl whom he lusted after; and
then fail to realize the awful nature of the
fact that he could not account for her, nor for
himself.
It was this that made Conley so destructive
to his daily associate, Leo Frank.
The negro could account for the girl and
for Frank; and he did it so simply, so
naturally, so truthfully, that Luther Rosser,
the white mental giant, was utterly unable to
cope with the ignorant black man, although
Rosser spent eight hours in the mental con
test.
Luther Rosser may not have known that
he himself strengthened the State's case enor
mously when he* made his ludicrous failure,
cross-examining that darkey. •
In the State of Virginia, the young liber
tone, H. C. Beattie, was convicted of murder
ing his wife, on less evidence than the State
of Georgia presented against Frank. Beattie
and his lawyers yelled “Judicial Murder!”
Up> to the very day he was to be hanged,
Beattie continued to say, “You are murdering
an innocent man!”
So persistent was he in making this asser
tion, that many people who had not read the
evidence, became convinced that he was inno
cent. Others who were not convinced, were
shaken by painful doubts.
But the courts and the Governor of Vir
ginia stood firm ,FOR THE LAM. -
Then, two hours before his execution, Beat
tie broke down AND CONFESSED HIS
AWFUL CRIME against the helpless, inno
cent woman!
It is highly probable that after Bums,
Rosser, Arnold, the Journal, the Georgian,
the New York Times, and other sensational
ists, shall have exhausted the money and the
patience of the rich Hebrews of New York
and Atlanta, this Georgia rapist and mur
derer, Leo Frank will confess his crime, as
Beattie confessed.
If Leo Frank has not had a fair trial, how
would we start about giving him one?
Every privilege known to jurisprudence
was extended to him. He had the best law
yers, he had the Bums’ detectives, he had all
the time he needed- to prepare his defense,
THE JEFFERSONIAN
he had every conceivable opportunity to rake
the earth for evidence.
He not only employed attorneys before he
was accused, but there is a vehement suspicion
that he attempted to detail one of his own
lawyers to associate himself with the prosecu
tion—in order that the able Solicitor-General,
Hugh Dorsey, might be handicapped by a
spy in his camp.
That was one of the most singular phrases
of the case, and it has evidently escaped the
attention of Mr. Ochs, Mr. Gray and the
Rabbi.
If that exceedingly suspicious movement
of the lawyer who has been closer to William
J. Bums than any other lawyer in Georgia,
meant what it seemed, to mean, it would bear
the interpretation that Frank knew from the
first that his case was desperate.
)
When the boisterous boaster, William J.
Burns, came to Atlanta to personally work at
saving Frank from punishment, his own con
duct was that of a clumsy amateur.
in declared that he had not come to save
Frank, or to work for Frank, nor predisposed
to favor Frank: he had come as the impartial
champion of Justice, to find the guilty man.
Burns has perhaps told many a lie as big
as that, but none bigger. He might have been
willing to have done it; but he did not do so,
because he couldn’t. Nobody could. Not
even T. Bosh Felder.
The next amateurish blunder that Wil
liam J. made was, when he visited Frank in
the Tower, and gave out the statement that
he found Frank to be normal. Not a pervert,
not a degenerate, not a neurotic: but “nor
mal.”
Thus the artless Bums drew public atten
tion to Frank’s horrible face, and provoked
comment upon his abnormal features. No real
detective would have stumbled like that. It v
was just such an asinine mistake as would
come natural to a brassy pretender.
I wonder if Burns ever studied any scien
tific work on morbid, diseased sexuality.
Even he might learn something from standard
books of that kind. He might begin with the
monumental volume of Dr. R. v. Krafft-
Ecling, German Specialist, called “PSYCHO
PATHI A SEXUALIS, A Medico-Forensic
Study.”
The physiognomy of Frank is altogether
unusual.. Burns himself confessed as much
when he fished up the pictures of his
client, showing his face prior to the age of
puberty.
Burns confesses this, also, by having recent
pictures taken in such away as to disguise
the profile. In the recent pictures, z7ic eyes
are refused, just as the Emperor of Germany
refuses his deformed arm, in all of his por
traits.
In the recent pictures of Frank, those bulg
ing, Satyr eyes are covered by the lids, as
Frank bends his head to read. In that pose,
you miss the protruding fearfully sensual
lips; and also the animal jaw.
Thus the self-advertising, flambuoyant
Burns focusses attention on a weak point,
“where the hand of God is seen.”
No negro witness put those unfailing signs
of abnormal sexuality on Leo Frank: nature
did it. Why? Nature runs into freaks, very
often, else we would have no such monstrosity
as Oscar Wilde, who sang better than an
angel and sinned worse than a beast.
Why do we have the men of Sodom, and
the crime of Gomorrha? Why do we have
men whose lust craves other men: women who
crave other women; and men who cannot be
satisfied by natural intercourse with the other
sex?
No man can explain it; but all men know
about the thing itself.
You trace a purse into my possession, and
then it disappears: the law tells me I must
account for it. The best law is common sense:
he who last had possession of the lost article,
must tell what went with it.
The person last seen with a murdered per
son, must give an account of himself, during
the period of time involved in the crime.
Frank could not do that; and that was the
millstone about his neck.
Moving heaven and earth to bring influence
to bear, Miss Jane Addams of Chicago, was
reached. Her letter to “My Dear Mrs.
McDougald,” is on its travels throughout the
whole newspaper world.
Miss Addams thinks “the women of
Atlanta, through their organizations, or
through petitions,” should protest against the
execution of Frank.
Miss Jane Addams did not hear the evi
dence in this case, and does not claim to have
even read it. She has not been solemnly
sworn as a juror, and Impressed into painful
duty as an agent of the lair.
Jurors do not love to find men guilty.
Judges do not love to sentence men to death.
On the contrary, it often wrings the very
hearts of these agents of the law to have to do
their duty.
They are the soldiers of peace. It is their
part to beat back the cohorts of vice
and crime. If they fail of their sworn duty,
Society dissolves, and lawlessness asserts the
old principle of “Might is Right.”
The humbler the citizen, the weaker in
power, the poorer in purse, the more should
he be the unflinching supporter of law, order,
and the judicial processes by which the State
endeavors to and punish it.
We cannot try cases in the parlor, on the
street-corners, in the barber-shops, in the pul
pit, in the synagogue, in the newspapers, or
by venal detective agencies.
Least of all, should any man be screened
because of his race. Nothing more disastrous
could happen than a general loss of confidence
in those methods which the experience of
ages has convinced us to be the best we can
do, in the way of trying persons accused of
crime.
Those methods are not perfect, God knows!
but what other human institution claims per
fection?
We .cannot give Frank more than we give
to others.
We cannot have one law today, and another
tomorrow; one law for the Jew, and another
for the Gentile.
I cannot think of anything more likely to
do permanent and grievous harm to the great
Hebrew people, than to have the idea go
abroad that they must be treated better than
we treat ourselves.
Prejudice is always easy to excite, and hard
to soothe. This storm of vilification aimed at
our State, because of one degenerate Jew, who
has had every right known to the law, will
not do us any harm, but may do its instigators
a great deal.
From all parts of the world, Jews come
here because of our laws, and our institutions.
They are not doing themselves any good, by
purchasing detectives, newspapers, artists and
other reckless slanderers to indict a whole
State.
If, as the Rabbi alleges, “the mob” took’
control of the Frank case, why did not his
lawyers see it, and move for a change of
venue ?
The law is extraordinarily liberal in that
respect. No case can come under “mob" influ
ence, unless the defendant and his lawyers are
entirely negligent.
Three negroes charged with a crime similar
to Frank's are now in the same Tower, their
case having been moved from Jefferson
County because “mob” influence was feared.
Are we to be told that the lawyers and
detectives and “strikers” for Leo Frank, were
PAGE SEVEN
