Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1904-10-27
An UnwhoIesoms Issue.
Roanoke Times, Oct. 2sth. 1908.

Roanoke Times, Oct. 2Sth, 1908
The political camT sign in Maryland has
evidently reached fever heat, its dlstin-
guished feature perhaps being the promi-
nenece of the race question as an issue.
Upon the first page of yesterdays Baltimore
Sun the Democratic managers have had
reproduced two pictures which according
to the New York Sun in which they origi-
nalIy appeared, represent actual condi-
tons existing among the colored sweldom
in Brooklyn. One shows white butler in
servile attitude before bis negro employer,
and the other white maid arranging the
kinky locks of her black mistress's hair. Re-
ferring to the two hundred or more rich
colored families now living in Brooklyn
the New York paper is quoted as saying
that their homes are furnished with ex-
cellent taste, their menials for the most
part being white, end that English buffers
are no rarity as their servants.
Senator German it seems in his speeches
is aggressively advancing the question as
an issue deserving of chiefebt considera-
ton, not only in Maryland but through
out the country. Says a special Wash
ington dispatch in yesterdays New York
Herald:
cit developes today that it is a well
determined plan on the part of national
Democrats to force the race issue to the
front not alone in the South and the close
States of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey
and West Virginia, but also in the larger
cities of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa,
where they think it possible to stir up the
foreign-born voters on the negro question.
They also argue that if there is TO be any
doubt about Kentucky and Missouri the
race issue will make these States surely
Democratic.
Senator German, as the leader of the
party in congress, will lose no opportunity
during the coming session.to develop the
issue, and campaign material is expected
out of renewed discussion of the Crum case
and the Inoianola postofice."
The Importance of the race question in
Maryland is one of course Of which the
people of that State are best situated to
Judge-but when it is proposed to make
the matter a national issue, we believe
that Senator German and bis friends Will
meet with overwhelming opposition in the
ranks of their own party. Should the
race issue be sprung at all, the initiative
ought logically to come from the South,
for it Is there that the real negro problem
exists. AS matter Of fact, the objec-
tionable features of the question, from
political standpoint have been to large
extent successfully met in this section, and
the Southern people it is believed would
be loath to have it used simply as a step
ping stone by which Democracy might
ride into power. A race problem we have,
to be sure, but it ought to be considered
and treated more from broad standpoint
of sociology than Of political vantage. 1t
can profit the country little, in any view
of the matter, to have its citizens wrought
up to condition of fierce racial antagon.
isms, the whites against the blacks, and
it would more than likely result in further
embarrassing and retarding anything like a
reasonable solution of the grave problem
with which the best thought of our people,
regardless of party, is now engaged.