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76 THE CRISIS

to the great mass of intelligent Americans,"
says the Tribune. "The race prejudice
fostered by the proprietors of certain hotels
and restaurants is fostered for business
reasons only. It is done to please a comparatively
small class. While there are signs
of increase in discrimination against the
Negro in the North here and there, these do
not indicate a tendency. Race prejudice cannot
gain headway against the stream of
intelligence or overcome the fusion of our
common life."

To this the News replies and incidentally
gives up "practical" democracy:
"This is a strange utterance to the South.
The chief thing wrong with the view expressed
is that it is wrong in its conclusions
as to the antidote for prejudice during the
present day. Does the Tribune want race
amalgamation? If not, why begin on a basis of no discrimination? prejudice, per se, is of course inimical, but the best way to keep down such prejudice is to keep the races as distinct and separate as possible. Such a course is better for the negro and better for the white man. This is not a day of 'nigger hating,' but is a day when men take a sane view of a great and unsolved problem, and then conclude that it is best to keep the races separate as far as possible. Prejudice invariably follows a contact of the races on any but a business basis. Theoretically, of course, this is not pure democracy, but in this day pure democracy will work only in theory and not in practice."
Two New Orleans papers thus view the new civil-rights bill in New York. The Times-Democrat says:
"As the former statute was evaded or ignored whenever and wherever the proprietors of hotels, restaurants, theatres and other establishments affected   saw fit to draw the color line, we may be reasonably confident of the latter's ability to get around the new one. Doubtless it will produce no end of litigation at the beginning - helping to line the pockets of a certain class of lawyers at the Negro equality-seeker' expense. But the statute's unpopularity, plus the ingenuity of the business men who believe in the color line, ought to make its enforcement extremely difficult, if not impossible. Not only so, but the ambitious Negroes' last case is likely to be worse than their first from their own viewpoint. Their attemps to enforce racial social equality have stimulated race hatreds and produced friction throughout the Northern States. The intolerable conditions at which they aim are not to be established by legislative fiat, either. Every new undertaking of the sort is bound, we believe, to quicken race antipathies in the North and so to hasten the correct national adjestment of race relations by means of a color line rigidly drawn."

The Picayune says"
"That this law expresses the wishes and feelings of the people of the State of New York is plain or it would not have been enacted, and, although there are many people in the Empire State who do not favor it, they are in a minority and are not represented in the public affairs of the State. Hereafter visitors to the metropolis from the Southern States are likely to encounter, more or less frequently, unpleasant incidents, but as they will only be the result of circumstances which they cannot prevent, it will be well to accept them with the best grace possible."

SOME SOUTHERN LOGIC.

For gymnastics in reasoning commend us to the editor of the Macon Telegraph. He believes in democracy and he is preaching the right of suffrage, but the external black man pops up here and there and plays sad havoc with his arguments. Listen to this, for instance:

"If the object of government is the protection of the weak, as we are told by all the sages and sociologists, then to make that protection full, and as complete as possible, the weak should be permitted to have a voice at least at the polls."

Sounds good, doesn't it? One could hardly ask anything better. Now read this:

"The right of franchise, for instance, is a normal human right among men. To hear men of that right intimidation is sometimes resorted to, but more often indirect devices are employed. In America–in a white man's country–a white man has the same right to vote that he has to live. The 'six months before' requirement for poll taxes, the 'Australian ballot' system and other devices are aimed at the poor and illiterate white man."

After that cold plunge ascend to Heaven with this fine flourish:

"Let us adhere to the fundamentals of the laws of the Creator. He made all men for equal opportunity and equal happiness

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OPINION    77

The fall of man rather upset things, but the original principles and designs are the same so far as men in freedom can be drawn in line with them. With the fall came craft, and craft is about the worst of evils, because it is for the most part hidden. A hidden or intentior evil (of the mind and thought and intention) is hard to eradicate by the individual in himself, and harder to fend against by another because of its very character.

"Innately, therefore, men are, and ought to be, equal; at least when you look above the criminal classes, the human averages pretty well."

Now descend into hell:

"let us preface by saying that under our law all white men who have qualified by registering are entitled to vote, and no device ought to be permitted which will cheat them out of that right. It ought to be made easy and not hard for an honest man to vote his convictions."

Finally, after dizzily recovering your balance, read this good old Southern stuff:

"The women of the Southern suffragette leagues are acting on the supposition that the Negro women, like the Negro men at present, can be virtually denied the ballot. They forget that the present situation as regards the Negro men required fifty years to be worked out; that it is at best but temporary, and that the more 'progressive' we become the more difficult will be the task of maintaining the existing status. They forget that the popular trend is continually and more and more away from independent State action, and that already we are threatened with the abolition of State lines in national elections.

"When the ballot is conferred on women by an amendment to the Federal Constitution the number of the disenfranchised Negroes in the South will be doubled. When the cry of that doubled element of the disenfranchised reaches the women of the North and West, who are in the saddle for the 'rights' of their sex, no ingenuity on the part of Southern man or woman can possibly invent a scheme whereby the present status can be successfully maintained. For the South's problem there will then be no solution."

Wherefore we beg to conclude that the editor of the Macon Telegraph is certainly some logician.

THE NEGRO IN EGYPT.

The New York Evening Journal says:

"The giggling shopgirls whose life of misery is still a joke to them–blessed youth!–should interest you deeply. And the Negro, too, with a tired black face, resting for the next day's slavery–slavery on a wage basis, but slavery all the same. Possibly you despise his thick lips. But those lips are carved on every sphinx in Egypt's sand, and if you could go back far enough you would find the ancestors of that Negro, before the days of the Pharaohs, laying the foundations of your religion and locating the stars in heaven. At that time your forbears were gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh. When you see the Negro on the opposite sear, the ill-starred one who has gone down in the human race, while we have gone up, think about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end–and your own. Don't merely say to yourself: 'That's a plain Negro,' and go on chewing gum."

Town Topics says:

"Well worth a visit is the Negro exposition in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the emancipation proclamation. Specimens of Negro handicrafts, from the time of the ancient Egyptians–whom some Negroes claim as ancestors–down to the present, are exhibited, and demonstrate the improvement of the race. The exposition has a special interest, because the commencement of an anti-Negro movement is observable throughout the whole country, and even in Europe, where color has hitherto been no barrier. During the Civil War the Negroes won the high commendation: 'Our colored troops fought nobly.' Since the emancipation proclamation their conduct, North and South, has been most exemplary. Very few of them were not wanted, and these few have been misled by white men, who conspired to use them for political purposes. I reason, therefore, that the fooling against them is only the survival of an old prejudice, fomented by wicked agitators, which can be lived down by their prevailing characteristics of industry and education. The Negro exposition is a notable display of their achievements."