The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-19
The MnryInnd Election Law.

The Maryland Election Law.
Some of our leading Republican con-
temporaries-like the New York Trib-
une''-are with much solemn grief pre-
dieting that the Maryland Suffrage Re-
form law, which will effect the disfran-
chisement of citizens who cannot read,
viii prove boomerang to its Democrat
ic authors and promoters. The Republic
an theory is that the Democratic ticket
will lose quite as many white votes az
the other will negro votes.
We do not agree with this view. The
new Maryland law, whatever else it may
accomplish or prevent, will certainly OPP
peaters from the District of Columbia,
who have been regularly carried into the
State to commit crimes against the suf-
frage, on the occasion of every import
ant election. The educated class among
the colored people cannot be had for such
purposes in numbers sufficient to produce
considerable numerical results AS rule
II is only the most ignorant element of
the race that can be hired to risk detec-
ton and the penitentiary by invading a
neighboring Commonwealth and stuffing
its ballot boxes for a matter of five or ten
dollars payment for the service. 1t is here
that Republican press estimates of the
law are especially at fault. They do not
take the important factor of habitual ne
gro colonization in Maryland by their
party, into account.
1t may be true, as claimed in a spe-
cial despatch to the New York Tribune"
from Baltimore-highly colored with par
tisanship-that there are not few white
Democrats-who will bitterly resent their
loss of the franchise. But that is merely
a negligible incident to great and need
ed moral and political reform. In a coun-
try like this. where some sort of educa-
tionai advantages are open to every man,
save perhaps In Alaska and Guam, any
excuse for reaching old or middle age
without learning to read the English Ian
guage can be but a poor one. Granted
that the white illiterates must share dis
franchisement with negroes on the same
plane of intelligence; the remedy open to
both is at their disposal Let them learn
to read, as we are assured large num-
Der of their dusky competitors are doing,
and the disqualification will remove it
self
Were it even true that, instead of re-
deeming Maryland from the rule of the
trusts and monopolies which govern in
fact wherever the Republican party does
in name, the new law would make the
State permanently Republican, we should
still say that the change was for good.
The intimate social connection of igno-
rance with vice, and the exposure OF
the former to the wiles of Inscriptions
demagogy. ought sufficiently to warn
every self-governing political community
to carefully eliminate illiteracy from its
suffrage. This country is annually and
continually absorbing thousands of i'm
migrants representing the lowest grades
of European society, who are as fit to
exercise citizen rights in country of
representative government as 20 many
freshly caught chimpanzees would be. In
the absence of salutary laws providing
for their exclusion from the privileges
of citizenship until they have acquired
q decent knowledge of our language and
Of our institutions. these ignorant for
eigners are rapidly taken into one of the
political camps and made voters-we we
greet to say. are sometimes fraudulently
voted before they have been six months
on our shores.
Were New York, Pennsylvania and all
our States. but notably the maritime
ones. to pass election laws like that just
enacted in Maryland. there can be no
question that the cause of honest cleo
tions ard good government thereby would
be promoted Let the ban be every
where put on illiteracy, no matter whom
1t may hurt. Too much OF principle and
Of national safety are involved to permit
Of much attention being paid to local ex-
pediency, or occasional hardship in the
connection.