Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1890-09-11
A NEGRO'S ARGUMENT.
The Colored Race Can Expect No Relic
from the Republican Party.

The Colored Race Can Expect No Relief
from the Republican Party.
The influence of education on the ne
groes of the South is we'll illustrated in
communication printed in the Prog
ress, of Sandersville. Ga. The writer,
r. w. Stephens, having learned to
read and write, and to understand the
issues of the day as they affect him as a
citizen and as a negro, appeals to other
negroes to examine them with equal
care SO that they may learn the mean
ing of their votes. He emphasizes the
fact that in the past twenty years the
Republican party has been claiming a
property right in the negro vote; it has
used it to make the tariff taxes on his
labor higher, while at the same time
striving to make trouble between him
and his white neighbors, who, though
oppressed by the same policy which OPP
presses him. help him in every possible
way. Il implore you, my colored
friends and brethren" he writes, Ito
abandon the thought that you will ever
get any more from the Republican party
than you now have, and that is, high
tariff on every thing. l never voted a
Republican ticket and l never expect
to, and l hope that the day will soon
dawn upon US when there is no such
thing as Republicanism in my race"
The discovery made by this educated
negro is being made by others all over
the South. As soon as a negro becomes
intelligent enough to be fit to vote, he
learns that all taxes are paid from the
earnings of labor, and he is thus en-
abled to understand what enormous
sums are yearly distracted from the
earnings of the Southern negroes by the
Plutocratic classes of the Northeast
The uneduca ted negro knows the mean
ing of chattel slavery, but it is only
through education that he can ever
learn that industrial slavery under laws
which take away his earnings and then
leave him to provide for himself is a
not less unjust bondage than that in
which he and his family were provided
for out of his earnings before prof is
were expected on his labor.
The negroes of the South have paid
enough in tariff taxes from their earn
ings during twenty years of Republic
anism to buy themselves half dozen
times over, with enough remaining to
fill the South with schools colleges and
universities for the higher education of
every negro in the South who will
take it.
There is better time coming for the
negro in the United States-a time
when he will have justice; when his
earnings will not be taken from him by
Federal law; when he will be allowed
to keep what he has worked for and to
apply it to his own comfort and adj
vancement. The Republican party will
not be able to force "a race issue on
the South. Mississippi, Louisiana and
South Carolina will adopt property and
educational qualifications which will
give intelligent and thrifty negroes all
they can ask from State legislation.
/ When this is done. and when negroes
qualify themselves for the suffrage,
they will cease to be the chattels Of the
Republican party and become citizens
of the States in which they reside-as
much Virginians, Tennesseeans, Ken
tuckians or Mississippians as any white
man who loves his State and its citizen
ship because he knows its value. st.
Louis Republic.