given an opportunity equally with whites,
by education and thrift, to meet the requirements of eligibility which
the State Legislatures in their wisdom shall lay down in order to secure
the safe exercise of the electoral franchise. The Negro should ask
nothing other than an equal chance to qualify himself for the franchise,
and when that is granted by law, and not denied by executive
discrimination, he has nothing to complain of.
The proposal to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment is utterly
impracticable and should be relegated to the limbo of forgotten issues.
It is very certain that any party founded on the proposition would
utterly fail in a national canvass. What we are considering is something
practical, something that means attainable progress. It seems to me to
follow, therefore, that there is, or ought to be, a common ground upon
which we can all stand in respect to the race question in the South, and
its political bearing, that takes away any justification for maintaining
the continued solidity of the South to prevent the so-called Negro
domination. The fear that in some way or other a social equality
between the races shall be enforced by law or brought about by
political measures really has no foundation except in the imagination of
those who fear such a result. The Federal Government has nothing to
do with social equality. The war amendments do not declare in favor of
social equality. All that the law or Constitution attempt to secure is
equality of opportunity before the law and in the pursuit of happiness,
and in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. Social equality is
something that grows out of voluntary concessions by the individuals
forming society.
With the elimination of the race question, can we say that there are
removed all the reasons why the people of the South are reluctant to
give up their political solidarity and divide themselves on party lines in
accordance with their economic and political views? No. There are
other reasons, perhaps only reasons of sentiment, but with the Southern
people, who are a high-strung, sensitive, and outspoken people,
considerations of sentiment are frequently quite as strong as those of
some political or economic character. In the first place it is now nearly
forty years since the South acquired its political solidarity, and the
intensity of feeling by which it was maintained, and the ostracism and
social proscription imposed on those white Southerners who did not
sympathize with the necessity for such solidarity, could not but make
lasting impression and create a permanent bias that would naturally
outlast the reason for its original existence. The trials of the
reconstruction period, the heat of the political controversies with the
Republican party, all naturally, during the forty years, implanted so
deep a feeling in the Southern Democratic breast that a mere change of
the conditions under which this feeling was engendered could not at
once remove it. The Southern people are a homogeneous people; they
preserve their traditions; they are of the purest American stock; and the
faith of the father is handed down to the son, even after the cause of it
has ceased, almost as a sacred legacy.
Again, for a long time succeeding the war, the South continued poor.
Its development was much slower than that of the rest of the country.
Prosperity seemed to be Northern prosperity, not Southern. And, in
such a time, the trials of life of the present only accentuated the greater
trials of the past, and reminiscences of the dreadful sufferings and
privations of the war were present on every hand, and feelings that the
controversy had given rise to, remained with an intensity that hardly
seemed to be dimmed by passing time.
But times change, and men change with them in any community,
however fixed its thoughts or habits, and many circumstances have
blessed us with their influence in this matter.
The growth of the South since 1890 has been marvelous. The
manufacturing capital in 1880 was $250,000,000, in 1890,
$650,000,000, in 1900, $1,150,000,000 and in 1908, $2,100,000,000,
while the value of the manufactures increased from $450,000,000, in
1880 to $900,000,000 in 1890, to $1,450,000,000 in 1900, and to
$2,600,000,000, in 1908. The farm products in 1880 were
$660,000,000, in 1890 were $770,000,000, in 1900, $1,270,000,000, in
1908 $2,220,000,000. The exports from the South in 1880 were
$260,000,000, in 1890 $306,000,000, in 1900, $484,000,000, and in
1908, $648,000,000.
In this marvelous growth the manufactures of the South now exceed the
agricultural products, and thus a complete change has come over the
character of her industries. The South has become rich, and only the
surface of her wealth has been scratched. Her growth has exceeded that
of the rest of the country, and she is now in every way sharing in its
prosperity.
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