Following the Color Line Part 38

_Whites Disfranchised as Well as Blacks_

But the limitation of intellectual freedom has not been the only result of the political dominance of the Negro issue. It is curious to observe that when one cla.s.s of men in any society is forced downward politically, another is forced up: for so mankind keeps its balances and averages. A significant phase of the movement in the South to eliminate the Negro is the sure return to government by a white aristocracy. For disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Negro has also served to disfranchise a very large proportion of the white people as well. In every Southern state where Negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt has been forced, the white vote also has been steadily dwindling. To-day in Alabama not half the white males of voting age are qualified voters. In Mississippi the proportion is still lower.

In the last Presidential election the state of Mississippi was carried by Parker with a total vote of only 58,383, out of a total of 349,177 citizens (both white and coloured) of voting age. Only one-third of the white men voted. It has been found, indeed, in several counties in Mississippi, that while the number of white eligibles has been decreasing, the number of Negroes on the registration lists has been increasing. In the city of Jackson, Miss., last year, 1,200 voters were registered out of a population of 32,000 people.

To show the dwindling process, take the single country of Tallapoosa in Alabama. The last census shows 4,203 whites and 2,036 blacks of voting age, 6,259 in all. After the adoption of the new const.i.tution disfranchising the Negro in 1901, the total registration was 4,008. Last fall, although the important question of prohibition had arisen and an especial effort was made to get voters out, an investigation showed there were only 1,700 qualified voters in the country.

This astonis.h.i.+ng condition is due primarily to the fact that there is no vital party division on new issues in the South; but it is also due to the franchise tests, which, having been made severe to keep the Negro out, operate also to disfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and ignorant white men. I spent much time talking with white workingmen, both in the cities and in the country. I asked them why so many workingmen and farmers did not vote. Here is one comprehensive reply of a labour leader:

"What's the use? We have to pay two dollars a year poll-tax, and pay it nearly a year before election. And why vote? There are no real issues at stake. An election is merely a personal quarrel in the clique of men who control the Democratic party. Why should we pay two dollars a year and go to the bother of satisfying the personal ambition of some man we are not interested in?"

_A White Oligarchy_

So the white vote is dwindling; the political power is being gathered into the hands of fewer and fewer men. And there is actually springing up a large cla.s.s of non-voting white men not unlike the powerless "poor whites"

of ante-bellum times. The white politicians, indeed, in some places do not encourage the poorer white men to qualify, for the fewer voters, the more certain their control.

Of course the chief fights in Mississippi and elsewhere are not at the elections, but in the Democratic (white) primaries; but this fact only accentuates the point I wish to make: the limitation of political independence of action. Such conditions are deeply concerning the thoughtful men of the South; but while they think, few dare to brave political extinction by speaking out. One would think that the Republican party, which ostensibly stands for the opposition in the South, would cry out about conditions. But it does not. The fact is, the Republican party, as now const.i.tuted in the South, is even a more restricted white oligarchy than the Democratic party. In nearly all parts of the South, indeed, it is a close corporation which controls or seeks to control all the federal offices. Speak out? Of course not. It, too, is attempting to eliminate the Negro (in some places it calls itself "lily white"), and it works not inharmoniously with the Democratic politicians. For the Republican machine in the South really has no quarrel with the Democratic machine; it takes the federal offices which the Democrats cannot get, and the Democrats take local offices which the Republicans know they cannot get.

_The South a Weapon in National Conventions_

The Republican Presidents at Was.h.i.+ngton have, unfortunately, played into the hands of the Southern office-holding machine. Why? Partly because Republicans are few in the South and partly because a solid Republican delegation from the South, easily handled and controlled and favouring the administration, is a powerful weapon in national conventions. McKinley played almost absolutely into the hands of this Southern Republican machine, and Hanna operated it. Indeed, McKinley's nomination was probably due to the skill with which Hanna marshaled this solid phalanx of Southern delegates. Roosevelt has made a number of first-cla.s.s appointments outside of the machine, even appointing a few Democrats of the high type of Judge Jones of Alabama.

Over and over in this book I have spoken of the Negro as a national, not a Southern issue; and in politics this is peculiarly true. Though having few Republicans, the South, through its office-holding Republican delegations, has largely influenced the choice of more than one Republican president.

The "Solid South" is as useful to the Republican party as to the Democratic party. Why the certainty expressed by Republican politicians of the nomination of Taft? Because the national organisation felt sure it could control the Southern delegations. It counted on the "Solid South."

Thus in a very real sense the government of this entire nation turns upon the despised black man--whether he votes or not!

_The Negro's Political Power in the North_

In another way the Southern att.i.tude toward the Negro affects the nation.

Owing to disfranchis.e.m.e.nt and "Jim Crow" laws, thousands of Negroes have moved northward and settled in the great cities, until to-day Negro voters, though they may not (as has been claimed) hold the balance of power, yet wield a great influence in the politics of at least four states--Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and Rhode Island--and are also considerable factors in the political destiny of Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. The potential influence of the Negro voter in the North is excellently ill.u.s.trated in the recent campaign for the Republican nomination to the Presidency, especially in the fight in Ohio between Foraker and Taft and in the eagerness displayed by Taft to placate the Negro vote.

In still another way the Negro affects the entire nation. Through its att.i.tude of exclusion the South exercises an influence on national legislation out of all proportion to its voting population. Though nearly all Negroes are disfranchised, as well as a large number of white voters, all these disfranchised voters are counted in the allotment of Congressmen to Southern states.

Out of this has grown a curious condition. In 1904 Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi, which have thirty-five members in Congress, cast 413,516 votes, while Ma.s.sachusetts alone, with only fourteen Congressmen, cast 445,098 votes.

Here, for example, is the record of South Carolina:

Total population of voting age, both white and coloured (1900) 283,325 Total white voting population 130,375 Total actual vote in 1902 for Congressmen 32,185 Total Democratic vote which elected seven Congressmen 29,343

Thus in South Carolina in 1902 an average of about 4,600 voters voted at the election for each Congressman (in 1904, a Presidential year, the average was about 8,100) while in New York State over 40,000 votes are cast in each Congressional district and in Pennsylvania about 38,000.

Now, I am not here criticising this condition; I am merely endeavouring to set down the facts as I find them. My purpose is to ill.u.s.trate the profound and far-reaching effects of the Negro issue upon the nation. And is it not curious, when all is said, to observe how this rejected black man, whom the South has attempted to eliminate utterly from politics, has been for years changing and warping the entire government of this nation in the most fundamental ways! Did he not cause a civil war, the results of which still curse the country? And though excluded in large measure from the polls, does he not in reality cast his mighty vote for Presidents, Congressmen, Governors?

Often, looking out across the South, it appears to the observer that the Negro has a more far-reaching and real influence on our national life for being excluded from the polls than he would have if he were frankly and justly admitted to the franchise on the same basis as white men.

All the real thinkers and statesmen of the South have looked and longed for the hour when the South, free of this dominance of an ugly issue, should again take its great place in national affairs. In 1875, at the close of Reconstruction, Senator Lamar of Mississippi predicted in a speech at Jackson that the South, having eliminated the Negro from politics, would now divide on new economic issues and become politically healthy. But that has not happened; less division on real issues probably exists in Mississippi to-day than in 1875. Why? Is it not possible that the manner of the elimination of the Negro from politics is wrong? Has it occurred to leaders and statesmen that Negroes who are qualified can be eliminated _into_ politics; that the present method in reality makes the Negro a more dangerous political factor than he would be if he were allowed to vote regularly and quietly?

_Southerners Who Are Speaking Out_

In spite of the domination of both parties in the South by narrowing groups of leaders there are not wanting men to fight for a new alignment.

On the Republican side one of these men is Joseph C. Manning, of Alexander City, Ala., who publishes a paper called the _Southern American_. He has shown how white men are being disfranchised as well as Negroes, how the South is controlled by a "Bourbon oligarchy" in the Democratic party and a "federal-for-revenue" Republican party--as he calls them. His paper appears every week with his denunciations in big letters, urging the Republican party to reform and become a party of truth and progress.

He says:

THE RALLYING CRY

The great body of the people of the white South, the ma.s.ses of the white people of Alabama, are to-day suppressed by the strategy of a political autocracy dominating under the guise and pretence of a democracy.

Why not throw off the yoke and get in the fight?

Rise up above this petty delegate getting, patronage manipulating, state chairman squabbling, until this small politics shall become lost in the great and the supreme issue.

Stop this "lily-white" nonsense. Quit being sidetracked by this Bourbon wail of Negro. Recognise this vital force of the immovable truth that an injustice to one American citizen will react upon all.

You can't have one law for the white man and another for the Negro in our form of government. You know that those who have the most talked of suppressing blacks have really suppressed you, white Republicans, and the most of the Southern whites.

The outcry of Negro and social equality and the like is the very essence of political moons.h.i.+ne.

A number of men inside the Democratic party are not afraid to speak out.

Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia said in a notable address at Athens, Ga.:

"Those whose stock in trade is 'hating the n.i.g.g.e.r' may easily gain some temporary advantage for themselves in our white primaries, where it requires no courage, either physical or moral, to strike those who have no power to strike back--not even with a paper ballot. But these men will achieve nothing permanent for the good of the state or of the nation by stirring up race pa.s.sion and prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not solve any of the problems of the ages. G.o.d did not so ordain his universe.

"Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with the Negro, but the Negro is an American citizen, and is protected as such by guarantees of the Const.i.tution that are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of Rights itself. Nor, if such a thing as repealing these guarantees were possible, would it be wise for the South. Suppose we admit the oft-reiterated proposition that no two races so distinct as the Caucasian and the Negro can live together on terms of perfect equality; yet it is equally true that without some access to the ballot, present or prospective, some partic.i.p.ation in the government, no inferior race in an elective republic could long protect itself against reduction to slavery in many of its substantial forms--and G.o.d knows the South wants no more of that curse."

Men of the type of Mr. Fleming are far in the minority in the South; they are so few as yet as to count, politically speaking, for little or nothing. But the fact that they are there, that they are not afraid to speak out, even though it ruins them politically, is significant and hopeful.

_Ante-bellum Aggression_

Now it is this way with a party having only one issue: when attacked, it can only become more and more violent and vociferous upon that issue. And this is what we discover in the South: an increasing bitterness of leaders like Tillman and Vardaman, for they know that their own existence and that of the party which they represent depends upon keeping the Negro issue prominent. The very fact that they are violent is significant: it shows that they recognise powerful and growing new elements in the South, which, though not yet apparent politically, are getting hold of the people.

In other words, the present group of autocratic leaders is seeking at any length to defend itself. And its work is not only defensive, it is also offensive. It must be. The inst.i.tution of slavery might have lasted many years longer if the Southern leaders had been content with the slave territory they already held. But they were not so content. They tried to extend slavery to the new territories of the Union, and it was this aggression that was the chief immediate cause of the Civil War. It was the struggle over Missouri and Kansas, and the policy of the country regarding the new West, whether it should be admitted slave or free, which precipitated hostilities.

"Continual aggression," John Hay once said, "is the necessity of a false position." The ante-bellum Southern leaders saw that they must either extend their inst.i.tution or else face its ultimate extinction.

At the present time we have a repet.i.tion of the ante-bellum aggression. As it happened then, we have speakers like Tillman and others coming North urging the validity of the Southern treatment of the Negro. Writers like Thomas Dixon rekindle old fires of hatred. At the same moment that Tillman is abusing the North for its interest in Southern education, he himself is speaking from Northern platforms to make sentiment for the Southern position. So we have the extension of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt and "Jim Crow" laws to the new Western state of Oklahoma and the agitation for disfranchis.e.m.e.nt in Maryland. So we have the advancing demand by Southerners in Congress for the repeal of the XV Amendment. And just recently Congressman Heflin of Alabama has introduced a bill seeking to provide for "Jim Crow" distinctions upon the street-cars of Was.h.i.+ngton.

How all this recalls the efforts of the ante-bellum Southern Congressmen to force the United States Government to take the Southern position on the slavery question!

_Fighting to Put the Negro Down_

I have recently read some of the voluminous discussions upon the subject of slavery which took place before the Civil War, and I have been astonished to find the arguments of the Southern political leaders of to-day almost identical in substance (though changed somewhat in form) with the reasoning of the old slave-owning cla.s.s. One hears the same arguments regarding the physiological and ethnological inferiority of all coloured men to all white men: the argument that "one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro," and even that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a beast.