The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-16

ton of head and hand, an education whose sole object is to- help him earn his daily bread and to dispose of the fruits of his labor in an intelligent manner Give the ballot today to the tens of thousands of ignorant negroes in the cane fields Nof Louisiana and they would be much worse on in . years time. The ballot would not procure them another days work, nor would 1t better their social condition, be- cause they could not apply the right of suffrage inteiligently. That Is to say. the negro as a whole. no matter how he may be mistreated and imposed upon by the white people, cannot better his condition by going into the voting booth. because he cannot apply the remedy of the ballot in such a way as to create change Tor the better.
 have listened to some terrible stories of the reconstruction period. l have talk ed to some successful Northern men now living in the South, who have themselves told me that no one can comprehend the horrors of that period except those who lived through it. Most or the evils of the carpetbag era grew out of the dense ignorance of the negroes themselves. l have seen orders of court to which was attached a cross witnessing the sigma ture of a negro circuit judge, who could neither read nor write, and yet into whose hands was given py law the power of life and death and or the disposition of property.
 Does Not Know Right and Wrong. It will be many a year before the Southern negro can be educated up to a point where he can De trusted to dis criminate between right and wrong, be- tween good men and bad men. so far as ! the suffrage Is concerned. Just at the present time the great mass of the ne- gro race Is densely ignorant, but they have their race prejudice, just as much as the white man has, and when they have the ballot their votes will go to the negro candidate and never to the white man. The minute the negro is giv- en the ballot. whether he acts collec- lively or not, he becomes an object of l interest to the practical white politicians and no one who pretends to understand
 the great mass of the black people them l selves can escape the conviction that l even if they were restricted to ballot | for white candidates their votes would
 surely be given to the highest bidder. | do not believe the negro in the South | will be fitted to exercise the right of suff- rage until the percentage of illiteracy is
 enormously decreased, and this win take
 not decades but generations
 White Man Goes to Extremes.
 While it is true thar the Southern ne. gro, as whole, is nos ntted to exercfSt the right of suffrage. 1t is equally true that the Southern white men have .en
 deavored to eliminate him by means oi methods which are so unequal in theil
 operation. so manifestly unfair, tha' they cause resentment among the ne groes, and induce the black man to be lieve that the laws made by white mer are no better than those the colored peo pie themselves would enact. Most South ern public men freely admit this fact but they point out that they are en. deavoring to correct by means of loca
 statutes. the original monumental blun der which was committed when the ne gro, fresh from the debasing influences II of slavery. was given the ballot.
 The weakness of the political situation in the South is the fact that the whit, leaders have been afraid to take hold O the problem honestly, That is to say they have either been afraid or unabl,
 to enact laws which would apply equall! to white and black men. The safety O the South undoubtedly lies in a systen of suffrage based upon the possession of property. or upon an educationa qualification or upon both. Neverthe
 less. one Southern legislature after an other has passed laws which seem to dis criminate between the white and blacl
 men, and which, although they may b. pronounced constitutional, are repugnan to the ordinary Anglo-Saxon sense of jus tice.