Evening capital and Maryland gazette., 1911-11-10
A SERIOUS QUESTION.
The Democrats The Negro And Com
PulsOry Education As Wanted By
Republican Club Women And
Socialists.
(Communicated.) J


To The Editor:-ln the campaign
just closed we were frequently told
by Democratic speakers that Republi-
can victory meant negro domination
, for the southern counties of the State !:
the endangering of our wives and
daughters and an increase in negro
crime generally, such as was witness
ed under the Lowndes rule some years
since. All of this, and more, is most
emphatically true, and every white
man should carefully avoid doing any
thing that may augment the strength
of he party that seems determined to
bring atual danger to our very doors.
But what are we to think of those
Democrats who voice for a measure
that the Republicans hold dear as the
apple of their eye for the advance
ment of negro suffrage and negro
officeholding? 1t ought to be impos-
sible for any Democrat to think of
such a thing, but so it is that here
and there we find both ordinary Dem
Gcrats and Democratic officeholders
who are unable to recognize the true
relationship of things and who play
to the forces that make for negro dis
integration.
At meeting at West Friendship,
in this county on November 4, we had
two prominent Democrats who are
involved in the dilemma in question
they are Mr.. Edward NJ. Hammond,
of Ellicott City, candidate for State
Senator, and Mr.. Lee, secretary to
Mayor Preston, of Baltimore. Both
these gentlemen believe in compulsory
education, which means, if bill for
the next Legislature is passed, that
every negro boy and girl in the State
will be forced by law to attend school,
the same as the white children until
16 years of age, and even longer if
fractions" have not been learned by
that time.
Everybody knows what the average
negro is who has been to school for
any such time-he is more fitted for
sharp practices, crime and petty poll
tics than anything else, somewhat as
Senator Tillman writes me: when
you educate negro you spoil a field
hand and make candidate for the
penitentiary."
vi OOulSSs soy, IutLG dAS CAIGp-
tions. Mr.. Hammond, at the meeting
in question, emphasized in the most
strenuous manner this negro question,
yet Mr.. Hammond, at the last Legis-
lature, worked hand in hand with
those Republicans who sought the
passage of a compulsory education
law for the whole State. If Mr..
Hammond has not changed his atti-
tude on the compulsory education ques-
tion, and if he goes to the Legisla-
ture imbued with his past ideas, he
will work for the passage of the COM
pulsory education bill now proposed
by Republican club women and Social
lists, and to that extent he will cut
the throat of the Democratic party
that is the long and the short of it.
If he wants to be consistent, he must
say. 81 want a school attendance
law for white children only" But
if he said this the Republicans would
very soon show him that that was un-
constitutional and absolutely out of
the question.
Even Republicans, in many places,
are alive to what compulsory educa-
tion means to the negro and are averse
to it, because they sensibly feel the
dangers that it brings to their doors.
Those Democrats who think denial
of compulsory education denial of
the public schools must be told that
the questions are entirely separate.
Men who want millions spent on pub
lie schools denounce compulsion. Gov
ernor Blease, of South Carolina, is
one of these.
With the election over, the point now
is to impress the successful candidates
with the Importance of pursuing pol
icies which will strengthen the party
and bring peace and prosperity to the
people.
FRANCIS Is. LIVESEY,
Clarkson, Nd.