Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1890-08-27
Politics Versus Progress.

foundation of our national and state
order, must be maintained. 1t like.
wise realizes that the better element
in every community must rule, OF
good order cannot prevail. Mere
partisan zeal for the extension of suf
frage, or strife in that direction for
party supremacy, without reference
to the real good to be accomplished,
cannot enlist the sympathy of reason.
able men, who desire only the country's
welfare and substantial progress.
There is such thing as abstract NOR
al principle in politics, and to-day
partisans north and south are insisting
on it. But the moral feature in the
federal election bill now pending in
congress, it is safe to say, does not
cut much of a figure with the leaders
of the party in power. The people
in both sections of the country have
their honest convictions about negro
suffrage, but the party blowers and
strikers in congress and out, in the
north and south, are more concerned
about success at the polls, and the
resulting distribution of the offices
than they are about the rights or
wrongs of the negro or the supremacy
or non-supremacy of either race.
Leaving out party politics or the
cries about constitutional or individ-
ual rights, it appears to the Lumber
man that the present is an inoppor-
tune time to force a measure like the
Lodge election bill upon the country.
The south is making rapid strides in
material progress. Vast capital
largely from the north, is being in
vested in southern enterprises. Min
ing, numbering. manufacturing, rail-
road building and agriculture have,
within recent years, been stimulated
to remarkable progress all over the
south. Capitalists are beginning to
fully realize that the resources of the
southern states present an opportunity
for great investment and promise
Of continuous profit. If the south
can have political peace and good
order for ten years to come the race
problem will be in way of eventual
settlement without serious political
complication or trouble. The tenden-
cy of things is toward the develop
ment of manufacture and trade.
The south will gradually lose its
agricultural dominance, and the pop.
ular power will concentrate in the
cities and industrial centers. This
will give a new phase to politics.
Although the negro race will doubt
less continue to multiply and COM
prise large element of southern pop
ulation, the growing cities and manu-
featuring centers will fill up with
whites, drawn from all parts of this
country and Europe. Thus, in time,
all danger of negro supremacy will
have disappeared at the polls. In the
meantime the colored population will
have improved in intelligence and
thrift. The ex-slaves are passing
away. In few years there will be
no ex-slaves or ex-confederate or fed
eral soldiers on the face of the earth,
and the strong prejudices on both
sides, that have been retained as leg
acies of the civil war, will, in large
measure, have been buried with them.
The memory of heroic deed, of sacri-
fees for high motives and patriotic
principles will remain, but the sur
viving generation will look forward,
not backward, for incentives to action.
At present the south needs money,
enterprise, good order and progress,
not political and party strife. Any
stirring up of the prejudices of the
war period can but injure the mater
ial and social advancement in that
section of the country. 1t is plain
that the south can be governed best
by the white element. The majority
agree in this, people from the north
as well as those who have always
lived in the south. The colored mass
es are really unfit for the suffrage.
While the Lumberman is aware that
the same may be said of large per-
centage of the people in northern
cities and of white men in sections of
the south, it is SO indisputable that the
average intelligence and moral state
of the whites is vastly above like
characteristics of the negroes. At
any rate, the white population of the
south is practically a unit against
negro dominance in politics and
government, and any effort on the