New-York tribune., 1903-02-08
MR.. ROOT AND THE SOUTH

Those who are trying to interpret Secretary
Roofs address at the Union League Club ami
varsarv as the announcement Of a new pollcy
toward the negro or even as suggestion OF
possibilty that he be abandoned TO his fate'
cutc mistake the spirit of his remarks and or
the occasion We do not understand that the
full text of his remarks mas been anywhere
published and naturally abstracts and extracts
fail 10 convey the precise significance OF what
Mr. Root said to his fellow club MEMBERS.
Those who heard him will recall that he spe-
officially refrained from comment on the sltua-
tion which he described, but presented the facts
of that situation as something which raised an
issue for the consideration of a club that was
traditionaIly interested in the solution of the
race problem
When Mr. Root spoke of the suffrage expert
ment as having failed, it was in connection with
a review of the efforts Of the South to disfran-
cbise the negro No more commonplace state
ment could have been made i'll the world 1t
has failed, and everybody knows it As a mat
Ter of fact the negro is disfranchised, and rec
ognition Of the fact implies neither approval OF
il nor admission that the situation is to be help
lesslv accented Addressed as it was to the
Union Teag1le Club the statement is more rea-
sonabIv interpreted as a call to its members,
who thirtv-iye wears ago sought TO secure for
the negro his rights by comforting the suffrage,
TO consider now what other means can be taken
to safeguard those rights. What Mr.. Root said
about negro officeholding and the outcry be-
cause negroes attended official receptions was
also a statement of facts, not Of policy It Is
nerfectIy true that the anti-negro propaganda is
increas singly aggressive. 1t is extending its de-
mands from year TO year, just as the old siav-
ocracy extended its demands, step by step, seek
ing the liberation of slavery in the territories
at the time of the Missouri Compromise ana
DENYING the power TO exclude 1t in the Dred
Scott decision. Now that the bulk of the
negroes have by the new constitutions peeh
effectualIv barred from the ballot box a new
step is being taken to reduce them TO SUD-
serviency. That is the meaning of the ad-
vanced position taken by persons in the South
to-day. who made no objection when Presi-
dent Cleveland appointed negroes to office or
invited them TO his official receptions. The
more respectable the negro Officeholder is, the
more his appointment seems to be resented, and
annareptIy the determination is TO keep the negro
down lust for the sake of keeping him down,
lust as in some communities disposition mas
been shown TO look askance even at industrial
schools which promised to make the negro an
independent worker instead of helpless COM
mon laborer
This is the condition which confronts the
country. At the present rate the dominant white
opinion will, as Mr.. Root said, succeed III ex-
Guiding the black man from office. That the
reconstruction policy has absolutely failed 10
do its expected work nobody can deny. Nor
can there be any doubt that the race question
is one of the most serious with which the coun-
try is faced. Nothing could be more natural
than for the Secretary of War, when recalling
the past work OF the Union League Club, its
support of emancipation, its equipment Of negro
troops, its advocacy Of the constitutional amend
ments to tell it that ifs work was net done; that
old issues were presented In new form; that
ii must give its best thought to the problem If
il did not wish to see the fruits Of its labor for
negro rights wasted Whether additional meas
ures should be taken TO secure to the black man
his vote in face of his present patent disfran-
chisement or Southern representation should be
reduced; whether the negro's right to hold office