The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-09-10

! nv AohBct any upotui cuus Sh "h0 N'iAo'
hand, no serious attempt has been made
: to enforce the penalty prescribed by the
second section of the Fourteenth Amend
ment for the denial of the suffrage, on
any ground whatever to any OF the
adult male citizens of State being citl-
zens of the United States
Mr.. THOMAS, although Republican,
| regards the second section of the Four
teenth Amendment as open TO criticism,
both in substance and in form. 1t tacitly
assumes, he says, that all male citizens
OF the United States are entitled to vote
at all elections and provides the pen
atty for any abridgment Of that right;
whereas it ought to have assumed that
the right to vote was one which might
or might not be given to such citizens by
each State to the extent that 1t saw mt
to prescribe, and the penalty ought to
have been made to depend upon the
extent to which the several States should
see fit to exercise their power to limit the
suffrage of those citizens in national
elections. 1t is further pointed out that
the second section of the Fourteenth
Amendment is an unwise punitive pro-
vision, enacted not for any good pur-
pose affecting the whole people of the
United States, but for the sole purpose
of Furnishing the people Of certain States
for refusing to surrender their local gov
ernments to virtual anarchy. 1t con-
stitutes reversal of the we'll estab-
lished relation which had previously
existed between the Federal and State
governments, and is an unjustifiable de-
parture from ancient methods.
Attention is also directed to the fact
that the section is not, and cannot be,
uniform in its operation, and is there
fore unjust. The primary basis of rep
resentation fixed by the Fourteenth
Amendment is the number Of inhabi-
tants, but the penalty for denying the
right to vote is based upon the proper
ton which the number disfranchised
BEARS not to the number of the inhabi-
tants, but to the number of male citi-
zens twenty-one years of age. Yet it
is notorious that the number of adult
male citizens in any one State, say Mon
tana, does not, by any means, bear the
same mathematical relation to the num-
Der of its inhabitants that the number
of such citizens in another State, say
Massachusetts, bears to the inhabitants
of that State. Another objection to the
second section of the Fourteenth Amend
ment is noted, namely, the extreme diff
Guilty, if not impractioability, of enforc-
ing it, Suppose, for instance, that
State should deny to any citizen the
right to vote because he failed to pay
poll tax. " is obvious that the number
of such delinquents would not in any
two years bear the same proportion to
the number of those who paid the tax.
Every ten years, however, Congress
would be called upon, in the discharge
of its legislative duties, to fix the repre-
sentation of the several States in Con-
gress for the succeeding ten years. What
prior year would it take, asks Mr..
THOMAS, as a criterion, when it came to
consider the denial Of the right to vote
based on non-payment Of a poll tax?
Other withholdings of the suffrage for
other reasons it would tax the inge-
nuity Of legislators to punish in a fair
and undiscriminating way.
But, it may be said, why not let things
remain as they are? Because, answers
Mr.. THOMAS, no reasonable person can
expect that the Fourteenth Amendment,
80 long as it stands upon the statute
book, will be permitted to be forever
unenforced. Nobody denies that GER
tain States have representation in Con-
gress and electoral votes based vir-
| tually upon vast numbers Of voters who
! have been dsfranchised in defiance OF
the Fourteenth Amendment. The peo-
pie of other States, against whom such
a state of things operates as a discrimi-
nation, will ultimately, in Mr.. THoMAss
opinion, demand and receive just and
equitable adjustment of representation
to the distribution of the suffrage. He is
also convinced that far sighted men at
the South, desirous Of retaining the SYM
pathy with which their efforts to solve
the race problem are and should be fol-
lowed at the North, will accept some such
compromise as is here suggested, rather
than persist in claiming in the national
councils weight to which they are no
longer entitled.
MIR. THoMAs's proposal is likely to
excite much interest in the Southern
States, because the author, while Re-
publican, does not wish to see the Fed
eral Government interfere in purely
local elections, and evidently regards
the Fifteenth Amendment as monu-
ment of legislative incapacity and the
second section Of the Fourteenth Amend
ment as Objectionable both in substance
and in form.