The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1904-07-09
A MATTER OF IMPORTANCE.
Suffrage Plank In Republican Plat
form Stands for More Than
Appears on Surface.

AS the campaign progresses more at
tention will be given to the suffrage
plank Of the republican platform than
1t has attracted during these first days
Of post-convention discussion. While
the republican party has always de-
manded full recognition of the four
teenth and fifteenth amendments, a
definite declaration at this time that
congress must take action marks q
departure from the policy of recent
years. There will no longer be even
the appearance of an attempt to build
up republicanism in the southern
states by ignoring the disfranchise-
ment of the colored people.
This suffrage plank, that might have
been a paragraph from one of Con-
gresham Crumpacker's speeches,
reads:
We favor such congressional action as
shall determine whether by special discrim-
nations the elective franchise of any state
has been unconstitutionally limited, and
II so we demand that representation in con-
gress and In the electoral college shall be
proportionaliy reduced, as directed by the
constitution of the United States.
In view of this declaration it will
be impossible for a republican con-
gress to escape an investigation into
the methods employed in the south to
suppress suffrage. Only one of two
results can follow such investigation.
Either the southern states will see
that it is impracticable to go on with
subterfuges, and will adopt honest suf-
Tros loxx he mil - a.
that the south secures only such rep
resentation in congress and in the
electoral college as its voting popu-
lation entities 1t to. To-day Mississip-
pi has Ave times the influence at Wash
ington that Iowa has, in proportion to
the people in each state that actually
take part in public affairs. This is
both absurd and monstrous.
There will always be the feeling in
the north that congress ought to take
steps to enforce the fifteenth amend
ment, and without any indirection
whatever see to 1t that qualified ne
groes are allowed to vote in the south
ern states. But as the fourteenth
amendment preceded the fifteenth in
the development of public sentiment
following the war, so 1t may precede
1t now, nearly 40 years later, in this
second revival Of sentiment on the
suffrage question. II the fourteenth
amendment is enforced and every
southern state has its representation
in congress and in the electoral col
lege cut down in proportion as it ex-
cludes it's colored vote, the most effec-
tive means may have been adopted for
securing final recognition of the rights
of the negro at the polls. For the
south would be negligible factor in
politics under fourteenth amendment
The Des Moines Register observes
that the moral effect Of an investiga-
ton by congress into southern election
methods will be wonderfully toning
to public sentiment regarding rights
of citizenship. The public mind once
fully turned to the problems that are
presented by southern evasions of the
constitution and southern attempts to
build up republic on the backs of
a subject race, will once for all in some
effective way settle 1t that this Is yet
to be a government of the people, re-
CARELESS of race or color.