The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1889-11-22

considerable exercised over the fact
that statehood and the opening Of the
Sioux reservation will add about
5000 Indians to tbs voting population
of South Dakota. Speculation is rife
as to how they will vote, if their votes
a easily be controlled, etc. eft Is
not unreasonable to suppose, "says one
eastern exchange, "that the presiden,
tial campaign will show nearly twenty
thousand votes of this class in the
Western States, many of whom will
cast their first vote for President.
This increase in the number of voters
may be sufficient to turn the political
scale in any one Of the new States,
and cause the Indians to hold the bal.
ace of power. In the future in max
ing political computations the Indian
vote will play an important part"
The interested manifested III the
subject would be increased tcn-fold
should the Indians to be given the
right of suffrage happen to outnumber
the whites. The people of South
Dakota would then have. a problem
before them exactly similar to- that
which has for years confronted the
South and which as yet is a long
ways from solution-eScept in the
minds ola few rabid northern Rcpub.
licans who either cannot appreciate
what negro supremacy in the South
means or are too much rapt up in
party gain to care.
1t may take quite a stretch of i'm
agination, but suppose that 100000
Indians were suddenly given the right
to vote in South Dakota, through a
law made under a Democratic admin
istration, and for this reason should
side with that party and vote its ticket
rightor wrong? We wonder how
Y Republican friends who are so
loud in their demands for ga free bal
lot and a fair count would relish
Democratic supremacy iii South Da-
kota through such means. We won
der how they, IN common with all
other whites representing nineteen.
twentieths of the wealth and intelli.
gence ofthe state, would relish Indian
justices, Indian sherif1s, Indian con
stables, Indian JURORS or such offices
and others held by men but little
above the average Indian in intelli-
-gence or tar below him in honesty.
Yet this has been the state of affairs
in many portions of the South; and,
because the people of that country,
already impoverished by a devastat.
ing war, would not submit to being
ground deeper into the dirt and driven
farther into bankruptcy through negro
rule, they are the recipients Of unjust
abuse by the North.
The average Dakota Indian has
more brains to the sduare inch than
the average Southern negro has to the
square yard, but neither of them has
intelligence enough to run a country
fit for a white man to live in.
When the law says man has a
right to vote and have his vote
counted we suppose it ought to be so,
whether it applies to a black man in
the South Or a red man in the North,
but all the same it is pretty tough
when it is brought right home to you
sometimes.
The laws should be SO changed as
to require q certain standard Of intel
ligence on the part of every voter
be he white, red, black, yellow,
foreign or native born, for there i sno
disg using the fact that it is fully as
detrimental to good government TO
have the balance O. power held in the
North by the spawn from the slums
of the great cities as it is to be run
AVER by the ignorant negro Of the
South or the red savage Of the West