New-York tribune., 1908-03-17
NEW-yORK DAILY TRIBUNE. TUESDAY MARCH II. 1908

"The Future of the Negro"
The impressive weight of the statistics wh1cn
I have given above cannot be minimized by
partial or prejudced view of those VINO 90 take
a broad. comprehensive view OF the si'uatlon y.
There are many noble white men In the oou'i
(and the number is increasingly actively inter
ested in the spread of primary and 1noustr,a "a
education among the negroes, from whom % lno.
vidual instances of the development or progress
sive farming and business communities among
the negroes be learned, and VINO, as re-
suit of their experience and observation. believe
in the ultimate success of this practical eouca-
tional experiment with the race
THE POLITICAL PHASE.
1 come now to the political phase of the negro
problem and the effect of the Fifteenth Ameno-
ment to the Constitution. The immediate erect ol
the Fifteenth Amendment, with the exclusion
from the franchise of those who had been en-
gagged in the Confederacy. was to throw large
political power into the hands of an electorate
that had not the education properly TO cohouc'
a government. -
And this led to the abuses which have been
held up to execration by the lurid pictures OF
the reconstruction days. How far tnose PiCt
ures have beer colored beyond the truth py
partisan and race prejudice it is not necessary
for us to discuss because one or the tnillss
which every lover of his country ought 10 re-
frain from doing is to say the Things winch a. Z
likely to stir up again the dying ehnDers VI i"'
and sectional hatred.
II is unnecessary to do so. Even the truth
under such circumstances Is an offence IL Is
enough to say that following reconstruction
DAYS the votes of the negroes, Whlch unuer S.d,o
and national laws they are entitieu " 49,
We're by fraud and violence made 20 coun. i9l
nothing and since 1880 the Fifteenth Amend
ment in number of the Southern states mas
been treated largely as dead letter.
OF recent years however. the leaders OF the
South have felt deeply the decentralization sure
to follow the fouting OF the law ana the man
tenance of a government on fraud and violence
They have seen that it was Impossible 10 n"
themselves of what they called negro DONNA
ton to the one purpose, and they have felt us
degrading influence in the whole pontlcaI az
mosphere of the South. Hence they have at
tempted to make the laws OF me Soutn TN Square 1nt
with the exclusion of the negro from the paLot-
They have sought to do this by acts Whlch Were
in their inception an evasion of the F1fteenth
Amendment by the of so-cailed grand
father" clauses and in other ways
But ultimately after these grandfather clauses
had ceased to operate the laws upon which
they have depended were laws creating educa-
tonal and property qualifications for electors.
1t is charged. and doubtless with truth. that
such laws not intended to be enforced
against the whites. but only against the blacks,
and that in this way they have continued TO
annul the Fifteenth Amendment.
QUALIFIED VOTING FAVORED.
In a population where iteracy is proportion
ateIv very large no one can object certainly
under the federal Constitution to the establish
ment of electoral educational or property quail
iffcations. And l do not understand that the
intellectual colOred of the country object
to the passage and enforcement OF such law
but they do object. and have right to object,
TO the partial enforcement of such law in
such a way as to exclude the ineligible black
men and allow to vote the white men who are
equally ignorant and ineligible.
But, my friends / am Optimist, and as
have already said, l regard the signs in the
South. changing in one method in respect TO
elections to another. an indication that in
the near future there will be a steady improve
ment toward a more and more equal and i'm
partial enforcement of these electoral laws.
think so because it is the part of political and
economical wisdom. The property and educa
tional qualifications make utterly impossible
return to the abuses which many SOutherners
profess to fear. The so-called negro domination
is nothing but a dream and nightmare of the
past. The Fifteenth Amendment. while in the
past it may not have accomplished all that its
authors intended it should has in it this ines
timable benefit to the negro race that it fixes
restriction upon state electoral laws that may
be temporarily violated but can never be
moved.
However the opponent of equal political rights
to the negro may turn and twist, whatever de-
vices he may invent 10 give speciouS appear
ance of legality to laws intended to exclude the
negro because of his race color. he will find
his purpose thwarted by the broad and generous
scope of the language of the amendment.
The amendment is the measure of lawfulnesS
toward which all good movements and all prog
resS in the South must necessarily tend. What
the negro and his friends demand is equality of
enforcement of the law under the Constitution,
and toward that end 7 feel convinced that all
the influence of industrial progress in the South
and the closer union between the sections nec-
eSSary making