Northern Ohio journal. [volume] (Painesville, Ohio) 1872-1896, 1880-04-03
Black and White.

The Judicial advice which Judge
Blodgett, of the United States Court in
Chicago, gave to United States Com
missioner upon the bearing of the Fif-
teenth Amendment and the law made
to enforce it. brings out the extraor-
binary fact that black man in the
United States possesses more rights
than his white brother-that the Re-
publican party, in their zeal to make
him the equal of his white brother,
have overdone the business and actu-
ally made him superior before the law.
The facts submitted to Judge Blodgett
are these: At recent election in the
town of Elgin, ILL.,, where the question
was the licensing of saloons, the Super
intendent of the milk-condensing works
in the place, who was opposed to the
licensing, notified the employees in the
establishment, seventy in number, to
vote the no-license" ticket-and we
presume they dutifully obeyed the Or
der. Such a transaction on Southern
plantation would be called intimida-
ton, dietation or something of that
sort, and five hundred Republican pa
pers in the North would ring for
months with the cry that the negro has
no power to vote except as his en-
ployer directs. But it is astonish-
ing what Constitutional differences
latitude makes in the same coun-
try. The defeated license candidate
at Elgin had the rashness to imagine
that this case Was covered by the law
passed to protect citizens in their right
to vote, and to punish attempts to IN
timidate Them; and he applied to the
United States Commissioner for a war
| rant for the arrest of the Superintend-
ent of the milk-works. The Commits
| sioner was not clear in his mind about
his authority, and sought advice from
United States Judge Blodgett. Judge
| Blodgett advised him that he could not
issue the desired warrant; that the
Superintendent of the milk-works had
not violated any United States law; that
the citizens whom he had intimidated in
| their voting were rbite men, and the
| Fifteenth Amendment and the statute
to enforce it were made to protect col
ored men, only.
The most extraordinary thing about
| this instruction of Judge Blodgett's is
| that it is correct. 1t is not original
with Judge Blodgett; it is a repetition
| of an actual decision by the United
States Supreme Court, in which it is
| held that the Fifteenth Amendment and
the statute made under it are intended
only for the benefit of colored persons.
White persons cannot claim the benefits
of them.
The deductions from this decision are
manifest. Negroes are protected in
their right to vote as they please to, but
white men are not. An employer, or
a manufacturing corporation in the
North, is at liberty to dictate to white
employees how they shall vote, by a
threat of discharge in case they refuse
to obey, but an employer in the South
who attempts to influence the votes OF
his colored employees in the same way
lays himself liable to prosecution in the
United States courts, with fine and
| imprisonment as the result. If colored
man and white man present themselves
OH the same day, in the same Federal
Court, demanding redress for the same
| grievance-intimidat in voting-the
former will be heard and have his
wrongs redressed, while the latter will
be told that nothing can be done for
him. This is the law and the Constitu.
ton rs the Republicans have made
them.--St. Louis Republican.
Does a belle have p striking ap.
| roorononp