THE FEAR CAMPAIGN

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Opinion Analyst Samuel Lubell travels the country and concludes: "To most voters, crime and lawlessness and the Negro are part of the same issue. The vehemence and profanity with which white voters voice their racial views have risen over the last two months." A New York-based writer visits Baltimore and Washington, and finds that "crime—Negro crime—is almost the only topic of conversation." The Aldine Printing Co. in Los Angeles, the world's largest manufacturer of bumper stickers, reports that its bestseller is SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE, the old Birch slogan.

In communities that have experienced serious disorders and high crime incidence and where racial tension is a constant fact of life, there is a desperate urge to do something, almost anything. Firearms sales are at an alltime high. In Newark, a white organization, the North Ward Citizens Committee, has been openly arming for "self-defense." Elsewhere, store owners are organizing self-protection groups. In Kansas City, 25 merchants in a racially mixed neighborhood are threatening to close their shops en masse.

"Block clubs" have been organized in some white areas adjoining Chicago's South Side ghetto. Suspicious of interlopers, the clubs keep track of autos passing through the streets. They also follow up on arrests and prosecution of offenders. Joe Lenoci, 35, a factory production controller who heads one block club, says that he is not a racist or a fanatic. He just wants "the law changed so that police are not so handicapped." Lenoci is uncertain what new powers he would give the police, and he cannot name the Supreme Court decisions he objects to.

Vicarious Troubles

There is hardly a single big city in which the individual feels completely safe on the streets at night. The fear of violence permeates the entire nation, wafted by television and newspaper headlines into areas that only vicariously experience serious trouble. In western Nevada, Ormsby County Sheriff Robert Humphrey warns: "What I'm afraid of is that the public will demand that we take too much authority. That is the real danger. But the alternative might be some kind of vigilantes."

Utah is a peaceful state by any measure. Negroes make up three-fifths of 1% of Utah's population. Yet a Bear Lake resort owner declares that "the politicians ought to move the Negroes back to the South, where they will be happy." A Salt Lake City Mormon bishop says of youthful protesters: "They have been infected by drugs, and the drugs were supplied by Mexicans, Negroes or Chinese."

State and local politics reflect the impact no less than national politics. New Hampshire is tranquil, but talk about law and order is rampant. Democratic Governor John King, now running for the Senate, discerns a fine grey line between treason and dissent: "We have reached the point where we had better draw that line and say, 'You shall not pass.' " John Sears, Republican sheriff of Suffolk County (Boston) has been appointing Negro deputies, attempting to work with ghetto groups, and telling his men that they need not carry weapons at all times. His innovations have loosed a cascade of criticism from voters that, he admits, "will probably cost me the election."

In Warren, Mich., a blue-collar town, Mayor Ted