The Minneapolis journal., 1903-04-10
The NEGRO ISSUE.
Col. Watterson Says That the Col
ored Man Is Not Yet Ready II
for the Suffrage.
The Forces of Evolution Are Slow
-Hothouse Process Is a
-iiIl Failure.

Chicago. April 10.-The annual BANQUET
of the Hamilton club, which is held. each
year on the anniversary OF the surrender
OF Appomattox, took place. last night in
the Auditorium hotel. Henry watterson
OF Louisville, KY, In discussing the race
problem said in part: t.Ts FtEfs: g-9seS
4 II grew up to regard the institution Of
African slavery as a monstrous evil. With
gray jacket on my back abated no part
of my abhorrence of it. The war over r,
fully realized that the negro could not be
suspended, like Mohammet's s coffin. in the
neither air. neither fish, flesh nor fowl;
that he must be made a freeman In fact.
as ne was in name; that he must be ha-
bilitated to his new belongings, and /
promptly accepted the three last amend
ments to the Constitution as the treaty Of
peace between the north and SOUTH, and
went to work in good faith to help carry
them out. I fought to remove the old
black laws from the statute book In Ken
lucky. ! I fought the Kuklux KIan from
start to finish. I fought In all possible
ways to give the black man opportunity
to achieve the hopes which. in common
with many others Of his friends, had
formed Of him.. l# E
After thirty years Of observation, ex-
perience and refection-always directed
from sympathetic point of view-I am
forced to believe with the secretary of
war that negro suffrage is failure.
1T is a failure because the southern
blacks are not equal to it. It Is
failure because the southern whites will
not have it.
IF. making hot answer to this, some
over-zealous and, as I must think. some
mistaken, partizan should say, we have
the power, we have the numbers, and we
will compel the whites Of the south, my
answer shall be, you did, and behold what
came of it,! And then, If my warm
blooded friend should throw up his hands
in despair and with kind of disgust turn
wearily away. I should continue-'may
you not have been from the first upon the
wrong track? IS there not another out
let to these perplexities, another solution
of this problem? After all. is not your
disquietude based upon the idea that there
are one set Of moral conditions at the
north and another set at the south, to
which the whole racial trouble is refer
able?' Believe me, there Is no such diff
ference. Remove every white democrat
to-day living in the south and replace him
with a northern republican, and twelve
months hence the conditions will be the
same, may be, worse, since the northern
republican would not be likely to have
either the patience or the personal SYM
pathy and knowledge possessed by the
native southerner.
The Only Solution.
"Gentlemen, I appeal to you as repub
ucans, and through you l appeal to the
republicans in the United States, to have
done with the conceit that, unless you
stand by the black man, that, unless you
continue him as an issue in parttzan
politics, injustice will be done him. In the
betterlng of his condition, and in the ac-
QUESTION Of property, starting with moth
ng, he has made Wondrous progress the
last five and thirty years; and, relatively,
greater progress at the south than at the
north. He could not have done this with
out the sympathy and cooperation Of the
southern whites. He has made little
progress in the arts Of self-government
either north or south, because Of the
agitation which has Kept him In a state
of perpetual excitement. with no healthful
public opinion to moderate 1t, and has
been made the sport tand prey of poll
cal exigency. always selfish, and with
respect to him more or less visionary and
needless.
1.-The negro can never become in any
benefcent or genuine sense an integral
and recognized part of the body polite
except through the forces Of evolution,
which are undoubtedly at work, but which
in the nature OF the case must needs go
exceedingly slow. The hothouse process
has been tried and it has failed. II, in
vested by every right enjoyed by the
whites, the blacks, gaining in all things
else, have brought corruption into the
suffrage and discredit upon themselves, is
it not a. kind of madness further to press
artificial methods, which,, however JUS
titled theoretically from educational look
outs In Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin,
tical application to the semi-barbarous
toilers in the cotton fields and corn lands
of Alabama, George and South Caro-
lina?" "