St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1944-07-14
of Mississippi
IntOlerances Herald
BY RUSSELL WHELAN JULY AMERICAN MERCURY
MAGAZINE

Continued from July Z Issue)
though they favored slavery, they
couldn't afford it on their unprolific
soil. Even today Negroes compose
only Is per cent of the 100000
population in the First Mississippi
District. They are no problem, no
problem at all. "Silent" John
speaking:
The Negroes know their
place and we know ours. The
good Negroes of the South
know they will be protected if
any trouble arises, and the bad
ones know they will be looked
after.
Jews and foreign-born in his
First Mississippi District total
silent minority of less than " of
one per cent. Neither they nor the
Negroes are on record as to their
opinion of Rankin as their repre-
sentative. Negroes do not vote in
Mississippi. There is a 50 poll tax,
but that is the lesser deterrent. It
is white mans country" Few of
the whites bother to vote, either,
only 1O,400 of them having given
Rankin his latest mandate in 1912.
This Indifference to the high priv
ilege of suffrage is attributable to
ignorance, apathy, poverty and the
complicated nature of the poll tax
registration requirements.
Thus the First Mississippi Dis
trict constitutes an aristocracy of
solvent white gentiles, remarkable
for many things besides its cham
pion in Washington: no more than
one per cent of its adults ever at
tended college; less than a third
went to high school and not more
than sixty per cent finished gram
mar school. Fifteen per cent of the
whites and twice as many of the
Negroes have syphilis. Midwifery
is common practise in rural COM
munities, and there, too, the hook
worm infests considerable per-
centage of every age group. It is a
poor land of poor people, constitut-
ing a disgrace and a challenge tS
the United States of America. It's
people simply cannot help them
selves, and all of the front-paged
anti-Semitism in the world cannot
conceivably improve their lot. They
may not be politically minded, but
they are certainly losing no sleep in
fear that the Jewish minions of
Moscow and the Bronx are con-
spring to seize their arid acres.
Rankin has done we'll by them.
Certainly he did a great deal to
put the Tennessee Valley Authority
on its feet and to spread the gospel
of rural Identification. In 1888,
everyone in Rankin's district who
had electrical service was paying
exorbitant rates to private power
companies. By 1910 all of these
were enjoying the benefits of cheap
public power. Thousands of other
Americans elsewhere can also
thank Rankin for the work he ac-
complished behind his slogan:
"Let's electrify every farm home
in America at rates the people can
afford to pay"
Since his Freshman" DAYS in
1920 Rankin has worked ably in
behalf of bills to benefit the Ameri-
can soldier. AS chairman of the
Committee on Veterans Legisla-
ton, he led the fight to override
the Presidential veto of the bonus
bill in 1895. It was Rankin, again,
who quietly slid through the legis-
lation which raised base pay in the
armed services from $50 to $50 a
month.
But recently he has come in for
considerable heckling in the press
and from veterans organizations
for the long delay in reporting the
so-called CT Bill of Rights bill out
of his committee. The Senate had
passed this bill in a hurry, 40 to o,
but Rankin didn't like its unem-
ployment compensation provisions.
He said he was afraid that SIS a