The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-03-20
A General Restrictive Movement.

Louisiana follows Mississippi and
South Carolina with a constitutional
convention that is now discussing the
report Of the committee to which was
referred all the various measures hay
elimination Of the ignorant vote Of the
state. AS in all the states that pre-
coded it, there is evident purpose
to discriminate between ignorance I'M
der black and that under white skins,
although we note several stout pro-
tests against it by several members of
the convention. After celebrating on
the various propositions for a suffrage
clause, the committee reported one CIV
ing the right of suffrage to four classes:
% those who can read and write, as evil
denced by their application for regis
tration; (O all property holders paying
taxes on a valuation Of $500; 90 the
sons Of freeholders, and (D those who
were voters on Jan. /, 1868.
The first clause bars the illiterate
blacks. but it would also cut out one
very worthy class of citizens, the AGA
dams of the Attakapas region. who
speak a language that is neither
French nor English, that has no lit
erature, and is the exclusive one of
the region. Among them the patri-
archal land system survives, the IA
Their retaining title during life. But the
sons on reaching the age Of eighteen
to twenty, marry and are allotted por-
tons Of the estate, which is theirs to
use until the final distribution follow
ing the fathers death. They are a
frugal people, and the boys accumu-
late property in cattle, horses and other
farm property. For these the $500
property clause is provided But there
would be still many excluded, so the
"sons Of freeholders" provision is made
to admit them to the suffrage. The
clause admitting those who were vot-
ers on Jan. 1, 1858, is designed to let
in the old Confederate veteran and
bar the negro, who, at that date, had
not become the doubtful beneficiary
of the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments to the, federal constitu-
ton tits not probable that the clause
1t was proposed to and rejected by the
South Carolina convention.
The rage which the effort Of Missis-
sippi to shake off the incubus Of an
ignorant suffrage inspired in the Re-
publican press Of the North has sub
sided, and one misses from its columns
the Indignant editorials that garnished
them then. This may be due to
perception that the South cannot be
consistently upbraided for doing what
Republican congress is trying to do
in the pending immigration BILL If
the illiterate foreigner, with his ma
tive intelligence, is undesirable even
as resident, 1t would go without ar
gument that the ignorant negro is more
so as a voter. In the amendment
adopted by Minnesotas voters, requir-
ing full citizenship for voting, the same
motive prevailed, the elimination from
the suffrage of all those Of foreign
nativity until after a residence suf-
f1ciently long to raise a presumption
of acquaintance with our government.
1t is no longer the favorite appeal of
the Republican, spellbinder that it was
his party that gave the right to vote
to the Immigrant almost as soon as he
touched our shores. Republicans have
learned the unwisdom Of that policy
as they are learning that Of others We
hemently supported by them in the
past.