Morning journal and courier., 1881-01-12
The Color Line.
As It appears I'm the North and South

As It appears I'm the North and South.
 [Co1 A. K. Mcclure in Philadelphia Times
 The South has one supreme desire and that is for peace-to be let alone. And it is not merely the desire of the whites it is is
 much the desire of the blacks. have met
 scores of the most intelligent colored men in every State and all of them out of office ex-
 pressed the same wish-to be let alone. The problem of race is solved in the South and no federal power political device can change it. The white race will dominate without regard to the occasional numerical preponderance of the blacks simply because
 superior intelligence and domination that the memory of man runneth not to the con trary, cannot be reversed without chaos.
 Tho black man has tried it, and he is con scious of his failure and of his failure to
 protect himself He cannot lead and those
 who most successfully lead him appeal to
 his baser passions and tempt him to his own
 degradation and sorrow. He is not the vic tim of violence now, but he has waded
 through violence to escape from his own in competent self-rule, and he has given up the
 unequal contest, not for a day a year, but for the present and for after generations.
 This is the plain truth in regard to race
 domination in the South as it is the plain truth of the race in the North. Here every
 channel of industry is open to him. The
 white and the black mechanic are on equal footing; the prejudices of race have no ex- istence save when there is a struggle for the
 domination of the spoiler over property, and he legislates and fills positions for which he
 is fitted not only with the sympathy but of ten by the votes of the whites. I saw score
 of colored policemen on the streets of New Orleans Eserving under Democratic mayor,
 but it would cost Mayor Stokley his last hope of election if he were to put the sable policemen on Chestnut street. I saw black men sitting on the Democratic side of south ern Legislatures, but mo Republican district
 in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania has ventur- ed to nominate one of the 750O colored voters of the city, or one of the thrice that number in the State, for any legislative position, either State or municipal. I saw the colored man mingle with Democratic organizations in the South, but not one could sit in the coun- cils of the League or the Union club or march in mixed ranks with the Invincibles oI young Republicans in Philadelphia. I saw him have free access to every channel of me- chanical industry in the South but he is re- lentlessly excluded from the organized me- His admission into the printing office of the
 Tunes or the Press or the North American would vacate every white mans case. where most of them vote the Republican ticket to help the black man and the colored labor of the South, as a class, is to-day better paid, more steadily en- ployed and more uniformly free from want, than the farm labor of the North or any coun- try of the world. Indeed, so great is the demand for labor in now rapidly progressing South, that all colored laborers are employed from January to January; their wives and children double or quadruble their income in the cotton picking season, that last three months in the year, and there is now a year