320 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



negro's vote has proceeded on the theory that all the black men for 

 all time are going to vote the Republican ticket, and that all the 

 white men in the South are going to vote the Democratic ticket; 

 in a word, all seemed to have taken it for granted that the two 

 races are always going to oppose each other in their voting. 



In all the foregoing statements I have not attempted to define 

 my own views or position, but simply to describe conditions as I have 

 observed them, that might throw light upon the cause of our political 

 troubles. 



As to my own position in all these matters I do not favor the 

 negro's giving up anything which is fundamental and which has 

 been guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States. It 

 is not best for him to relinquish any of his rights; nor would his 

 doing so be best for the Southern white man. Every law placed in 

 the Constitution of the United States was placed there to encourage 

 and stimulate the highest citizenship. If the negro is not stimulated 

 and encouraged by just State and national laws to become the 

 highest type of citizen, the result will be worse for the Southern 

 white man than for the negro. Take the State of South Carolina, 

 for example, where nearly two thirds of the population are negroes. 

 Unless these negroes are encouraged by just election laws to be- 

 come taxpayers and intelligent producers, the white people of South 

 Carolina will have an eternal millstone about their necks. 



In addressing the Southern white people at the opening of the 

 Atlanta Exposition, in 1895, I said: 



" There is no escape through law of man or God from the in- 

 evitable : 



" ' The laws of changeless justice bind 



Oppressor with oppressed ; 

 And close as sin and suffering joined 

 We march to fate abreast.' 



" Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load 

 upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. "We 

 shall constitute one third and more of the ignorance and crime of the 

 South, or one third of its intelligence and progress; we shall con- 

 tribute one third to the business and industrial property of the South, 

 or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, 

 retarding every effort to advance the body politic." 



Subsequently, in an open letter to the State Constitutional Con- 

 vention of Louisiana, I wrote : 



" I am no politician; on the other hand, I have always advised 

 my race to give attention to acquiring property, intelligence, and 

 character, as the necessary basis of good citizenship, rather than 

 to mere political agitation. But the question upon which I write 



