The age-herald., 1901-11-30

This is a land of free speech. Americans may now discuss anywhere. north CT south. even the negro question in all ite besrings, This has not al#sys been easy to do, even in .he historic city Of Phil adeiphia, which claims the proud dis tinction Of beiag the birthplace of Amer 'ieen liberty. In 1859 George William Cur LIS became temporarily a hero by an anti slavery speech in Philadelphia.
 A mob gathered to prevent him, but the Mayor of tho city, backed by the police succeeded in protecting the speak CT, who delivered his address in spite of the missiles that were hurled into the room where he spoke.
 In those days the negro question vvas full of dynamite. because we then had in this country two systems-I might el- most say two civilizatiens-one founded on free and the other intimately inter- woven with and largely dependent upon slave labor. They were in sharp conflict with each other. and therefore 1t was thnt free discussion of the slavery question or negro problem, was then sometimes difficult at the north. while it was every where impossible in the south.
 The fifteenth amendment was formulat- ed after heated debate in Congress on the rostrum and In the newspapers. In de- batting the question of granting suffrage by law to millions of ex-slayes, and then of clinehing the right by a constitutional
 
 whether 1t worked for good or evil, the Fundamental proposition for consideration should have been the fitness of the ne- gro Was he intellectually, by training and anteeeaents, competent to take part often controlling part-in the great business of government? The nearest approach to the question of the fitness of the ex-slave for the ballot was this argu- ment: Did not the government fear the negro?
 Was he not the ward of the nation? Did not the government owe him pretec- tipn? And how could he protect himself without the ballot? But the fitness for the ballot that had been taken for grant ed did not exist.
 The political structures based on negro ballots, like the house of the unyise man in the Scriptures. fell because they were builded upon sand Out of the recon struction and fifteenth amendment have come many of the peculiar phases and nearly all the aggrayations which now beset the race problem at the South"
 So I am free to say that in my opinion the granting of universal suffrage to the negro was the mistake of the nineteenth century I say this, believing myself to be friend to the negro, willing and anx- ious that he shall have fair play and the fullest capacity. It was a mistake to tempt the negro away from the field Of labor into the field of politics. where, as rule, he could understand nothing that was taught him except the color line. Universal suffrage in the South has de- moralized our politics there. Negro suf- frage was a worry to the white man of the South, for it brought him face to face with situation in which he con- cluded. after some years of trial, that in; order to preserve his civilization he must resort to fraud in elections, and fraud in elections, wherever it is praetieed, is like the deadly upas tree: it scatters it's poison in every direction. Universal suff rage in the South has created a bitter