The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-05-22
CONCLUDED FROM PAGE g..

birth upon the ruins Oh LF66 SO'0IH
ment.
We denOunce the frauds, r~Ob5eries,
violence and intimidation by means
of which the Democratic party car
ried the last election. We point to
the exposure of these unlawful meth
DDS in the contested election cases
from the Sixth and Ninth Congress-
ional districts now pending in the
House of Representatives and we
confidently appeal to that body to
set the seal of condemnation upon
these crimes against the ballOt-bOX,
which if UNPUBLISHED at home and I'M
rebuked by Congress must convert
popular elections into a mockery and
a farce.
Notwithstanding the Democratic
party has at all times in the past
bitterly denounced force bills, we
call attention to the fact that the
present General Assembly passed an
election law which authorizes the
employ ment of over six election
bailiffs at the polls, armed with
deadly weapons instead of legal war
rants-fOr the sole purpose of in
timidating the voters of the State.
We arraign the leaders of that party
for embOdying in said law the most
unjust features of the Kentucky and
South Carolina laws by which thou
sands of citizens, both white and
black, of those States, have been de-
prived of the liberties guaranteed
them by the Constitution of the
United States.
The administration of the affairs
of the State and of its several cOun-
ties, during four years of Republi-
can ascendency, has been scrupul-
Ously clean, faithful and economical.
During this period the credit of
the State, as shown by the market
value of it's bonds, has reached the
highest point known in our history
and we challenge a comparison of
this record with that of the DemOc-
racy during any like period.
The Republican party has always
fostered popular education, that
party engrafted in the organic law
of the State the mandatory require
ments providing public schools for
both whites and blacks, but that
party viii never brand ignorance as
Il crime whose penalty is disfran-
chisement so long as the aus Of
that ignorance is the neglect of the
State. And we do not believe that
any man, with the natural instincts
of a father, will vote to disfranchise
his offspring and degrade them to
the level of a felOn simply because
he or his State has failed to educate
such offspring, or because PrOvi-
dence has afflicted them with physi-
cal blindness for which this wicked
scheme makes no exemption. We
Il only judge the future by the
past this is especially true when we
study the value of Democratic
promises in the light of their per
fOrmanCes. They tell US that they
are devoted friends of education 4;
that their candidate for Governor is
its especial champion. The impartial
hand of history points to their rec
ord from 1870 to 1895, during which
period they had uninterrupted CON
troll of the legislature and during
that quarter of Il century the num-
Der of ~illiterate white voters, instead
of diminishing, actually increased by
more than twenty thousand, being
an average of about one thousand a
year. The figures of the census
show the number of i~lIiterate white
voters in North Carolina was in 1870.
33,111 1880, 44,42O; 1890, AZ $50.
By the census of 1890 the number
of white voters, who could read, but
could not write, was 1900; so that
the total number of white voters
liable to be DISTINGUISHED is 60, $40.
How, then, can we trust these
Democratic leaders to wipe out ilit-
eracy even among the whites within
the next eight years, when their first
step Is to throw away 800, OOOa year
of the school fund heretofore derived
from the poll tax. With such a
record in the past, how can any
man expect their promises to be re
deemed at par?
These men have plunged the State
into an evil course of which no man
sees or knows the end. The conse-
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