The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-11
POLITICS Ar TIE CAPITAL.

. We have have been noting in the newspapers the excitement, locally. in Washington over the election of dele- gates by Republicans and Democrats to their respective National Conventions They have no other form of election there and much pent-up energy seems to overflow every four years, On the Republican side recently there were three tickets in the feld. One was a iily-white. one Roosevelt ticket sim ply. one black man and one white man and the third stood for staid Republi- canism and on this, too. appeared one negro and one white man. The lily whites were doomed as a matter of course The negro churches took this ticket in hand. The ticket was read out and denounced in all the negro churches. the Sunday prior to the day of the primary. Tn city of So,00o ne- groes this proclamation killed the lily whites. In Washington the negro uses his church constantly as politi- cal rostrum. The day before John Wise argued the Virginia suffrage
 sE a ? clause in the Supreme Court. we may interject, a collection was taken up in all the colored churches of Washington to secure John fee. and he was paid In the money just as it had been turned into the contribution plate. paper and silver. half-dimes, dimes, quarters. halves and dollars. Between the other tickets the churches had no choice to make when it came to color. Rather curiously the Roosevelt ticket was de- feated; why. we are not informed There were all the accompaniments of really important election. Carriages hurried to and fro. while free cigars were puffed and free whiskey flowed pienteousiy.
 On the Democratic side, two days later, therewas even more excitement. Hearst had had his hired men at work for nearly a year and the Hearst party in Congress, Livernash and Van Duzer, had nightly harangued such crowds as they could collect. Scores of wagons traversed the streets in all directions with large signs made of cloth and covered with red and black lettering labor's friends. Hearst was beaten, and now an investigation is to be had to show how he was beaten. Hearst's chief lieutenant went over to the op- position few days before the primary, and 1t looks to a man up tree nightly ha Nw.I
 was sufficiently induced, 1t must be re- garded as a good joke on Hearst He has resorted so shamelessly to the use of money that there Is a positive grati- fication in seeing him buy gold bricks.
 We have called attention to these rather absurd quadrennial outbreaks in Washington to direct attention just once more to the policy of the Republi- can Party with respect to the negro. To get rid of him at the National Capi- tai. the Republicans have disfran- chised both whites and blacks. They have demonstrated they have no more confidence than the Southern whites In the negro's ability to participate de- gently and wisely in the Government. The negro cuts the same capers in Washington that he cuts in Columbia, Montgomery and Jackson. The Repub- lican Party followed hard upon the ex- ample set them in the Southern States. and in 1878 they forever knocked Cuffee | out at Washington. Small bodies of whites clamor to be restored to the rolls as voters and to be given a local control of affairs. NeverI Congress prefers to be worried with all the petty concerns of a. city government, streets. sewers, gas mains, railways. schools and a hundred and one other matters, all more or less trivial in com parison with a, great nations affairs; prefers this annoyance to chancing the consequences of negro suffrage. The present government of the District of Columbia is the final. because it is the sincere and reasoned answer of the Re- publican Party to the negro's demand to be allowed to vote.
 | A Massachusetts man may wax wroth about the suffrage laws of Alabama; he will never vote to change the totally disfranehising law of the District |