The Hot Springs star. (Hot Spings [Hot Springs], Dakota [Dakota Territory, i.e. S.D.]) 1886-189?, 1889-10-11
Bosll!

Periodically and especially upon the
eve Of a political campaign the Demo
Gratis discover Republican conspiracies
for negro colonization and raise a
clamor that Republican leaders are
running negroes into election districts
with the intention of voting them and
then running them out again. There
has not been an election in Illinois. In
diana, or Ohio these last dozen years
when the story has not been started
that negroes were crossing the river
into the southern counties of these
States for this purpose, and in every
case II reports have proved to be W.
ing fabrications. Now a similar clamor
has been raised concerning a c%onspira-
cy to induce negroes to emigrate from
the South into the Northwest. and
particularly into Montana and WASH
ington. as a political move to help the
Republicans in the pending new State
| elections.
So far Us any organized movement
OF negroes into these territories is con-
cerned there is just the same basis of
truth that there has been in the other
movements to which reference has
been made and no more. So fur US
opportunities for labor are concerned
in those localities aud so fal as induce
ments a be held out to the negroes
that they can better their condition
there may be Il movement on the part
OF such of them as can find the none
necessary to make the change, lust as
there is on the part of white men, but
that the movement will amount to any,
thing like a general exodus, or, in fact,
amount to anything more than a change
Of base on the part of individuals here
and there, there is no reason to be-
lieve, and those clamoring Democrats
know it. The conditions of climate
and soil and the opportunities for agri-
cultural labor in the new States do not
present any inducements strong enough
to attract the Southern negroes. Tie
climatic conditions of Arizona and
New Mexico and both the eli
matte and agricultural conditions of
California, which runs farther south
vel than the Gulf States, are we'll
adapted to the negro, and access to
them by the great transcontinental
lines has been easy for the last fifteen
or twenty years, and yet hardly q
handful of negroes have been induced.
to leave the South and go there, not
w~ithstanding the injustice, brutality,
and outrages inflicted upon them in
the cotton States. Even in Missouri
there are no more negroes. compare
lively, than there were during slavery
times. If there is any general move-
ment of negroes in the South it will be
toward the rich cotton lands along the
Southern rivers and toward the aiiuvi-
al districts of the Mississippi valley.
This is already shown by the grayitat-
ing of large bodies of negroes from
North Carolina into Southern Alabama
and Mississippi, and this to such an
e.tsnt that the whites of these States
are even now dreading the increase of
the existing black numerical superiori-
ty. To whatever extent Washington
and Montana may increase their popu-
lation by colored men, it will be due
only to the inducements which those
States can hold out to them in the way
OF labor at more remunerative wages
than they csse now receiving and to the
prospect that they may in time get
land of their own and be allowed to
enjoy the result Of their own industry
without any regard TO politics. How
great or how little the movement may
be time q alone determine, but the
experience Of the past Is certainly nm.