The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-07-23
SOME GENUINE RANr.

For newspaper that Is usually fair, temperate and well informed. The Port land orgeonian can sometimes stray about as far a-fieId az any newspaper we ever read. In recent editorial about the solid South and Tasfs Greensboro speech. the paper says: :.
 Of course if the negroes were not unlawfully deprived of the right to vote there would be no solid south. The Republican League, which recently met al Philadelphia. adopted a resolu- ton to punish the States which ur- constitutieHaily disfranchised the ne- eroes by disfranchfsing their represen- tati1a in Congress proportionaily. Bat however just this measure might be. 1t would certainly not promote the growth of the Republican party In the South. It would tend, on the contrary. to stimulate a dogged persistence In all costs. There Is nothing in MT. Taft's speech to Indicate that he agrees with the opinion of the Republican League upon this point Much as he deplores the inegality Of negro dis. cured through economic processes ra- ther than by rigid enforcement os constitutional penalties. and in tnis he agrees with the greatest man the
  one of the greatest of his generation Booker Washington believes and teaches that the political rights or the negro will flow necessarily ana smoothly from his economic nsnn, iadepenSS. 9S. denial of suffrage is not only technf- caIly fiegal, but also a manifest out rage against merit and 1t will not long be denied.
 Why should a newspaper with the prominence and standing of The Or egonian keep up that rotten rant, or ranting rot, about negro disfranchise- ment? They are not unlawfully or un- constitutionaily deprived of the right to vote, but they are prevented from voting en mass by laws and regula- tions that are effective and will con- tinue. To intimate. as The oregonian does, that If all safeguards and re- strictions were removed, they would break up the solid South. and as nat ural consequence would control the elections in this section, is worse than nonsense, for that Is condition that will not again obtain control in the South. Thirty years ago and more, when the South lay practically helpless, when all the efforts of the Federal government, and all the forces of car- pet baggers and scaliawags were using all the powers of bribery and intimida- tion to force the Southern people to submit to negro rule-even then the effort came to nothing at last To say that anything would bring about a repetition of reconstruction horrors is too absurd for controversy.
 But the height of The oregonian's nonsense is reached when 1t refers to Booker Washington as ''the greatest man the South has produced since the war. if not the greatest of his genera ton" The latter part of the sentence would even shut out Roosevelt and Joe Cannon. That is entirely too much, and was hardly to be expected from Re- publican paper. and loyal Roosevelt ian. at that. We should think 1t would Af least elevate It's President little higher than Southern negro.
 As far as our own people are con- cerned we never feel at all humiiiated when a Northern negro-worshipper places his pets on higher plane than the Southern white man can reach. We see and read frequent gush of that kind. though not often from a paper of good character.