The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-11
BOTH PARTIES
 TO MAKE PLAY
 FOR NEGRO VOTE
Klan Influence Overshad- s Ows Debt Of Grati-
 tude' In North
By RAYMOND CHAPTER

By HA1MOND CLAfFEh
 WASHINGTON. Sept. 9-Unusual importance is attached to the negro vote this year because of its unsettled na- ,ture. In previous presidential cam paigns, this vote has been checked off as solidly republican. Republican cam paign managers, knowing it was safely ,hitched, never bothered much about it. Democratic managers. also knowing it was safely hitched to the opposition. turned to more fruitful fields.
 But the situation is considerably diff ferent this year. A wave of political unrest has coursed through large sec tions of the negro population and in View of the fact that this element is numerically strong enough to affect the result in number of important states, Indiana, for instance, it becomes an i'm portant quantity in the campaign.
 Probably the most significant fact is that negro leaders have discovered that they can get more consideration by playing the political game as independ- ents and the tendency is all in that di- fection now. They have powerful or .eanizutions, such as the National Asso- citation for the Advancement of Colored People, which incidentally has declared for La Toilette.
 Demonstration Of Strength
 X remarkable demonstration of the 2 power of the negro vote came last spring . when negro politicians forced the re- . publican national committee to kill the . plan for cutting down southern repre- 5 sentation at republican national con- 2 ventions. When the national commit q 1,.n tio-which had been ordered by the 1920 i convention-would drive thousands of offended negroes into the democratic ] party, the committee promptly ignored 5 fhe mandate. Negroes claim that they were respon- sible for the reelection of Senator Lodge by a small margin in 1922. Some at l tribute the election of Senator Bayard, . democratic, of Delaware in the same year to negroes who jumped the repub- lican party.
 Democrats have put up a negro in the first Illinois district to run for . Congress against Martin Madden, the republican incumbent.
 Additionally the negroes have been republican, due of course to the anti 1, slavery policy on which the party was founded. When they migrated to the north, they expressed their gratitude by voting the republican ticket. But the : northern negroes have now become an industrial population and as such are subject to new influences which are be- ginning to bear fruit. The indorsement of La Toilette by some negro organiza- tions is one result.
 Klan Puts Some Over
 The kinship between the klan and the republican organization in a number of northern states is another influence tending to pry the negroes from the re- publican party. Democrats are not overlooking this opportunity. They are busy among leaders on this particular subject in states like Indiana and Ohio. But whether the bulk of the negro vote will desert the republicans is highly doubtful.
 Large numbers of negroes who have migrated from the south in the last four years will vote their first presidential ticket this year and they offer a ripe field for political proselyting. Depart ment of labor investigators report large increases in the number of skilled me- gro workers in 1922 and 1923, amount ing to 70 per cent in Michigan, 6S per cent in Ohio and Kansas, almost as much in California, and 40 per cent in New York and Pennsylvania. The in crease in Indiana is nearly double.
 Three-quarters of the negro popula- ton in the north is congregated in the cities so that the problems of political organization, canvassing and getting out the vote are simplified. The trans planted negro soon loses his provincial ism. He quickly absorbs new ideas. The result is that the negro is develop ing a feeling of political independence which is making him a more uncertain quantity at, the polls every year.