The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-20
WONDERFULLY CHANGED SEM
 TIMENT.

Recently we have noticed many signi- ficant utterances in Northern newspapers on the now dominant race question. and some of them are really surprising. As an example. we make an extract from a recent editorial in The Hartfort courant, partly owned by Senator Hawiey of Con- necticut. who Is one of the leading lights of the Republican Party. and who is pre- stunned to agree with what appears in his paper. It says:
 To give the negro the franchise, for child. A law decreeing that he was as Nht to exercise it as wisely as the white man simply because he was a human in the long run as a law decreeing that his skin was white and not black. Pow CTS and rights that the average white the aysrass negr sw %P that does not possess may. be constitutional against @ natnre. t N Nor can DffaSse it Ssmmans Ut y, respect for long. The greater damage lies not in disfranchising the negro, but In refusing to repeal laws that defy com mon sense.
 That is certainly a graphic as well as truthful presentation. True. 1t is only what the Southern people have known all along, but 1t shows a decided advance in public opinion when such utterances came from prominent and influential Northern men. Evidently those laws which defy common sense" are the con- stitutional amendments and laws designed to enforce them and which "are not en- forcible because they are against na. ture.''
 Another very decided expression comes from Rev. s. D. Mcconnell, rector of one of the principal churches in New York. and who recently spent some time down In Maryland, where he had chance to study the negro-not as he could have studied him in Alabama CT Mississippi, but it was the real negro, He wrote to The Brooklyn Eagle:
 within sight as I sit here are the cabins of dozens of negroes. It is har- vest. The farmers are unable to secure laborers to save their grain. The road master cannot get men to repair the help in her Kitchen. They are all ready and anxious to pay for the labor they need. Here, also, are Idle colored men and women sitting about the doors of | winter, as last. they will be begging and piifering. Why should not truant of- ficer for grown children have the powel' to send this stalwart young negro whom wants q man in the wheat field. fix the terms of labor and payment and see to 1t that they are kept? Why should he not send this strapping coIored girl to work in Mrs. Blanks kitchen upon the terms he shail nx and that she be taught to cook?
 It will be noticed that the remedy he proposes Is a somewhat drastic one. for it means that all idle negroes should be forced to work. A law along that line enacted in any Southern State would raise such howl up North as would split the atmosphere. yet this prominent minister practically regards 1t as "a just and proper method of dealing with the swarms of idle and absolute negroes who are the bane of every Southern city. His plan may not be feasible and might not be exactly just, but it would do much to abate a real evil which we of the South have to contend with.
 We could print many other expressions of like nature. but these two are fairly typical of the changed sentiment in the North and East, as we'll as of the tole- rant and fair spirit that it fast coming to the front up there. Such expressions as we have quoted would have been inn possible in that section even a dozen years ago.