The morning journal-courier., 1908-03-17
Declares His Attitude on Prob lem Before Meeting in In terest of Hampton
 Institute.
EQUAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
Race Not Opposed 10 Limitation of
 Franchise, But Rightly Demands
 Impartiality in Execu- tion of Law.

| fore a representative Brooklyn au- dience at Plymouth church tonight l Secretary Taft expressed an optlmis- ' lie conviction concerning the future or l the colored race in the United states. lAfter presenting an array of statis- l lies to show the progress of the Amer Ilcan negro since the day Of freedom, .he secretary declared that this healthy growth in intellect, learning and in- dustry must continue.
 The occasion of the secretary's vpeech was a meeting under the aus l pices of the Armstrong association and in the interests of Hampton In stitute of Virginia. The historic edi- | Bee was crowded to the doors and many who sought entrance were dis appointed. Only handful of color ed persons were present
 Preceding the address of Secretary Taft. Dr. Booker T. Washington head of Tuskegee institute, spoke, as | did also pr. H. B. Frissel.
 feel that I owe an explanation to the audience why I assume to speak upon the topic of the evening. As . far back as I can remember, which carries me into the middle of the civil war, my ideal of patriotic feeling derived from the political attitude of my father and mother as I under .tood twas closely associated with the hatred of slavery and sympathy with the negro race. Subsequently under republican tutelage, that sym pathy diffused itself into strong po- litical bias in favor of the mainte- nance of the political rights of the negro in the south, intensified per haps rather by desire for republican victory than for specific benefit of the negro race.
 "I come now to the political phase of the negro problem and the effect of the fifteenth amendment to the constitu- lion. The immediate effect of the fif- teenth amendment, with the exclusion from the franchise of those who had been engaged in the confederacy, was To throw large political power into the hands of an electorate that had not the education properly to conduct a government, And this led to the abus- es which have been held up to execra- ton by the lurid pictures of the re- construction days. How far these pict- ures have been celored beyond the truth by partisan and race prejudice . 1t Is not necessary for us to discuss, because one of the things which every lover of his country ought 10 refrain from doing is to say the things which are likely to stir up again the dying embers of race and sectional hatred. Ii Is unnecessary to do so. Even the truth under such circumstances is an cffense. It is enough to say that fol. lowing reconstruction days, the votes of the negroes which under State ana national laws they are entitled to cast were by fraud and violence made tc count for nothing, and since 1880 the Ififteenth amendment in a number oi the southern States has been treated largely as a dead letter.
 Of recent years, however. the leaders pf the South have felt deeply the dem pralization sure to follow the floutine of the law and the maintenance of 2 Government on fraud and violence They have seen that It was impossible to rid themseves of what they called negro domination to the one purpose and they have felt it's degrading influ. ence in the whole political atmosphere of the south. Hence they have attempt ed to make the laws of the soutf square with the exclusion of the negr, from the ballot. They have sought tc do this by acts which were in theii Inception an invasion of the fifteenth amendment by the use of so-calleC "erandfather" clauses and in othe1 ways. But ultimately after these"grand. father" clauses had ceased to operate the pws upon which they have de pended were laws creating educationa and property qualifications for electors Jt is charged, and doubtless with truth that such laws were not intended to b. enforced against the whites but onl! against the blacks
 In a population where illiteracy i proportionately large, no one can ob feet certainly under the federal consti | tuition to the establishment of electora . educa tional or property qualifications And I do not understand that the in 1 tellectual colored men of the countr. object to the passage and enforcement | of such a law, but they do object, am | have right to object to the partia
 enforcement of such law in such way as to exclude the ineligible blacl
 man and allow to vote the white me- ! who are equally ignorant and ineligi | ble.