The South and the National Government | Page 4

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.
Again, the Democratic party has not preserved inviolate its traditional doctrines as to state's rights and other issues, and has for the time adopted new doctrines of possibly doubtful economic truth and wisdom. Southern men, adhering to the party and the name, find themselves, through