The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-03-28
WHAT WOULD YOU Dop

'The poor always ye have with ye," said the Savior on one occasion, and we may say the same of the negro and of conditions incident to his presence with us. In Howard, County, Mo-, a short time ago, some negroes were whipped by the citizens and ordered out of the county, and The New York Independent commented in severe terms on the incl dent. A prominent citizen of a neighbor- ing county wrote to The Independent, and among other things he says:
 Tt is hard for you to get Northern people to get at the kernel. Across the street from where I sit writing there is a saloon. Grouped around 1he front door actual count, twenty-one idle negroes, mostly youths It was spectacle to see, recently, before our City Council. large committee of negroes, representing the respectable element among them, asking the city authorities to rid this town of the low class of regroes. harlots, drunk ards. loafers and thieves. We find our laws helpless: to impfison hem means comfortable winter quarters for them. What would you do?''
 That question, is both pertinent and per picking. Of course it will be justly con- tended that fhe citizens had no right to whip and drive out these worse than worthless negroes but-What would you do? The editor of The Independent an- swers the question n way by saying:@
 What would we do is not easy to tell, We would not seize these lawbreakers ana whip them and rob them of their proper ty by driving them from their homes. and infiict them on some other commu- nifty. We would convict harlots, drunk ards and thieves and make convict life unpleasant to them with hard work. We world shut up that saloon, which is re- tained by the will of tho white citizens"
 That is no answer at all. The class of unless they have committed some crime. Nor could the editor shut up that sa- loon" without valid cause. There is no charge that any disorderly conduct is all lowed in the saloon, or that its not con- ducted decently. The proprietor has pre- sumably taken out and paid for license. and If he is guilty of no wrong to shut up his. saloon would be treating him with as little respect for law and justice as the negroes were treated whose cause The Independent espouses.
 The conditions of which this Marshall County man writes prevail throughout the South. Such sights as he depicts can be seen in Montgomery every bright day in the year. There are idle, dissolute ne- groes to be seen at every place where one can comfortably loaf. They are men and boys, and sometimes women and girls can be seen. Some of them, at least, are of the classes mentioned by the writer. We cannot convict them be- cause they are idle or because they may possibly be criminal. We cannot whip them and drive them out as our North ern brethren not infrequently do. The fact that they may be harlots and thieves and that they spend all their time in idleness is no valid reason for taking the law into our own hands, or for dealing with them without law, but these condi- tions do furnish reason why we listen with little tolerance to the advice of those who know nothing of the conditions. And we are brought back to the question What would you do?