CONGRESS. (THE APPORTIONMENT.) 



167 



State. Intercourse between the States must be 

 free and unrestricted. Take the industrial situa- 

 tion, for instance. Under existing conditions the 

 (standard of living among the colored people of 

 the South is low, and the rate of wages on the 

 same basis. The colored laborer is completely at 

 the mercy of the employer. He is unable to ini- 

 tiate and maintain labor organizations for the 

 protection of his own interests. 



" In the State of South Carolina to-day there 

 is a qualified condition of industrial serfdom. 

 Farm laborers are compelled by the penal laws 

 of the State to carry out their contracts of em- 

 ployment, however unjust and unfair they may 

 be. They must perform all ' the labor reasonably 

 required ' of them by the contract or go to jail. 

 If any one shall knowingly employ a laborer in 

 any kind of service who is under contract of labor 

 with another, he, too, is liable to fine and impris- 

 onment, though the workman or his family may 

 be on the verge of starvation. Can labor be inde- 

 pendent and progressive where such laws exist? 

 Could such laws exist in any State where labor 

 has the freedom of the ballot? 



" In recent years a new impulse has been given 

 to manufacturing industries in States where col- 

 ored labor is abundant. With the natural re- 

 sources and cheap tractable labor, the field is pe- 

 culiarly inviting to capital. The employer is free 

 from the annoyances that labor organizations 

 sometimes give, in other sections, and with simpli- 

 fied machinery and the coercive force of penal 

 laws, the negro becomes as efficient a factory hand 

 in many lines as the white man. Capital will con- 

 tinue to be attracted by such favorable condi- 

 tions, and the products of cheap, servile toil will 

 continue to be sold in competition with the prod- 

 ucts of intelligent, independent labor in other sec- 

 tions of the country. The strength and glory of 

 our civilization abide in the comfortable but un- 

 pretentious homes of the independent wage-earn- 

 ers. Shall those homes be invaded by the blight- 

 ing hand of servility? Shall intelligent labor be 

 debased by such unjust and unholy competition? 



" Already cotton-mills in New England have 

 been compelled to reduce wages in order to compete 

 with the cheap labor of Alabama and Georgia. 

 Tariffs can not be imposed for protection, but 

 colored labor must be educated and elevated. The 

 negro must be given political power as fast as he 

 can safely use it if his industrial independence is 

 to be achieved. This is the only remedy. Have 

 other States no interest in this question? Has 

 organized labor no concern about it? 



" If the right of suffrage was taken from the 

 white laborer, his independence would soon be lost 

 and the legal safeguards for his protection would 

 disappear from the statute-books. Citizenship is 

 an empty husk without the power to protect and 

 enforce it, and that power is the ballot. The late 

 Mr. Elaine truthfully said, respecting the negro: 



" ' Without the right of citizenship his freedom 

 could be maintained only in name, and without 

 the elective franchise his citizenship would have 

 no legitimate and no authoritative protection.' 



" No one questions the superiority of the white 

 race, but that superiority is grounded in the 

 rugged virtues of justice and humanity. It is 

 surely no credit to American manhood to bind 

 and shackle a helpless race to avoid the temporary 

 embarrassments that would attend its proper de- 

 velopment. Equal rights for all is the strongest 

 sentiment in the American heart. 



" I rejoice at the evidences of a stronger bond 

 of unity between all sections of the country; but 

 the ties, if they are to be permanent, must be 

 based upon everlasting principles of right. The 



Constitution is the measure of Iho rights and re- 

 sponsibilities of the Slates in their mutual rela- 

 tions, and all its essential provision-, mu->t be ob- 

 served. * 



"Let justice be supreme!; give virun- Hie palm, 

 whether it be in the white man or the Muck man. 

 Pass suffrage laws as you will, but msike t IK-HI ;ip- 

 ply to all alike. Give the ebony-hucd .-iti/i n the 

 same opportunity in the struggles of life an HK; 

 Anglo-Saxon, and you will have appeased jn.--.lieo 

 and satisfied the conscience of the Amerie:i.ii 

 people." 



The discussion on the right of States to re- 

 strict suffrage by imposing qualifications upon 

 voters led to some bitter recriminations, and had 

 in it something of old-fashioned political acri- 

 mony. To indicate the drift of the argument, it 

 may be said that the Southern members of Con- 

 gress met the plea for general justice, and the 

 natural right of the negroes to vote, by the dec- 

 laration that restriction of the suffrage is abso- 

 lutely necessary to the security of Southern com- 

 munities, and that the issue is one involving the 

 very existence of decent and honest government. 

 They met the constitutional argument against re- 

 striction of the suffrage, except under penalty of 

 decrease in representation under the terms of the 

 fourteenth amendment, by citing the fifteenth 

 amendment, as modifying the scope of that which 

 preceded it, and allowing restriction of the suf- 

 frage for reasons favored at the North, but now 

 adopted as available pretexts at the South. Mr. 

 Kitchin, of North Carolina, said: 



" As is well known, immediately after the war, 

 when the fourteenth amendment was adopted, it 

 had in view negro suffrage throughout the South, 

 but it did not attempt to compel it. It held forth 

 an inducement to the States to grant it. That in- 

 ducement is found in the fourteenth amendment, 

 in the second section, the penalty of reduced repre- 

 sentation being declared against States that re- 

 fused the right of suffrage to the negro race. 

 President Lincoln never wanted negroes to become 

 voters. He recognized that the white race is supe- 

 rior to the black one, and, as he said in his speech 

 at Charlestown, these two races could not live 

 upon terms of equality, that there were physical 

 differences which would prevent them from so liv- 

 ing, and since that was a fact he declared himself 

 in favor of assigning the superior position to the 

 white race. 



" That sound view was not altogether obliterated 

 when the fourteenth amendment was adopted. 

 But in the days of reconstruction, and as I believe 

 in hostility to the white people of the South, the 

 opinion grew that negro suffrage should be forced 

 upon the people of the eleven Southern States, 

 and so the fifteenth amendment was presented and 

 compelled to be adopted throughout the South by 

 means that can not be approved by honest men, 

 while great States in the North were voting their 

 disapproval of it. Without the compulsory and 

 vicious means used in the South it would not have 

 been adopted. However, as Mr. Boutwell, who 

 had charge of the fifteenth amendment while pend- 

 ing in this body, said, it was designed to carry 

 out the powers placed in Congress by the fifth 

 section of the fourteenth amendment. 



" It prescribed that the right to vote should not 

 be denied or abridged on account of race, color, 

 or previous condition of servitude. That was the 

 ultimate purpose of the second section of the 

 fourteenth amendment, which had the penalty of 

 reduction of representation in it. Mr. Speaker, that 

 being the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, 

 and the fifteenth amendment being the enforce- 

 ment of that purpose, then unless a State violates 



