All of these great acts were intended to destroy utterly the basis on which rested the old slave power, and on which would rest the new serf power, namely: inequality and race subjection. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, the 14th raised the former slaves to citizenship, and the 15th conferred on them the right to vote. The whole scheme for removing forever this evil seemed on paper complete enough, and in practice it would undoubtedly have proven effective had not an unexpected difficulty arisen when it was put into operation. This unexpected difficulty was the attitude of the Supreme Court in interpreting the laws made in pursuance thereof. The effect of the decisions of this tribunal has almost invariably been against the Negro's claim to equality, and in favor of the Southern contention of the existence of two races in the south, one permanently dominant and the other permanently servile, and that the maintenance of this state of race superiority on the one side, and of race inferiority on the other furnished the only working plan of their living in peace together or of their making any further progress in civilization. Owing to this deplorable attitude the Supreme Court has been a hindrance rather than a help in the settlement of this question. No relief need be looked for from it, therefore, under the circumstances. Relief, if it comes at all, must come from another quarter of the political system under which we live. And for such relief fortunately, the 14th amendment has adequately provided. All that is necessary to render the provision of this amendment, which is applicable to the present situation, effective are courage and common sense. But alas, courage and common sense in respect to this subject seem to be sadly lacking to-day both at the North and among the Negroes as well.
The provision of the 14th amendment just referred to reads as follows: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state."
Every Southern state has virtually by one device or another, since the adoption of the 14th and 15th amendments, denied to its colored citizens the right to vote. This was first done by the shot-gun method, which gave place in time to fraudulent manipulations of electoral returns, and this in turn to "grandfather" and "understanding clauses" administered by prejudiced registration boards in those states which have revised their constitutions. Says Professor Dunning in an article on "The Undoing of Reconstruction" in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1901: "With the enactment of these constitutional amendments by the various states, the political equality of the Negro is becoming extinct in law as it has long been in fact, and the undoing of reconstruction is nearing completion." Now this statement is exactly true. The South has everywhere nullified in practice the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. It denies to black men the right to vote, but it counts at the same time those same black men in the apportionment of its representatives. The present serf power therefore, enjoys to-day a right far greater than that enjoyed by the old slave power, for it counts five of its disfranchised black citizens not as three but as five free men. It has achieved the extraordinary feat of eating its political cake and keeping it at the same time.
In South Carolina, for example, where the blacks outnumber the whites by 224,326, and in Mississippi where the colored population is in excess of the white by 263,640, "the influence of the Negroes in political affairs," as put by Prof. Dunning, "is nil." And this is substantially true of almost everyone of the old slave states whether they have or have not revised their constitutions. Says Prof. DuBois: "To-day the black man of the South has almost nothing to say as to how much he shall be taxed, or how those taxes shall be expended, as to who shall make the laws and how they shall be made. It is pitiable that frantic efforts must be made at critical times to get law-makers in some states even to listen to the respectful presentation of the black side of a current controversy."
Entrenched in the South to-day is an aristocracy based on race. The whole tendency of things down there is to de-citizenize the blacks, to reduce them to a state of permanent political and industrial subordination to the whites. This is aristocratizing the republic with a vengeance. For with the right to vote, the right to a voice in making the laws, denied to any class of people in an industrial republic like ours, such class must go from bad to worse in the struggle for bread, for existence, in competition with more favored classes. It does more: it reduces the efficiency of such a class as a producer of wealth not alone in respect to itself, but in respect to the section in which it lives as well. For whatever degrades and wrongs such a class degrades and wrongs the community and the country of which it forms a part. And there is no help for it, for such is the natural law of retribution which no "understanding" and "grandfather clauses" and registration boards, however adroitly devised, can in the long run possibly evade or nullify. This then is the deplorable economic situation with regard to whites and blacks alike in the Southern states, as a direct consequence of the undoing of the 14th and the 15th amendments to the Constitution by those States. The degradation of their black labor will ultimate in the degradation of their white labor also. In fact, the disfranchisement of the blacks operates practically everywhere down there as a disfranchisement of the great body of the whites likewise. For disuse of a power, whether physical or political, begets in time disinclination and then incapacity for exercising the same. The right to vote, under present political conditions which prevail throughout that section, is, as a matter of fact, exercised but by a small minority of the whites only. The total vote, for example, cast for representatives in Southern congressional districts is surprisingly slight in comparison with that cast in Northern congressional districts. The same is true of the vote for presidential electors, and for the executive, legislative and judicial officers of the various southern states for that matter. A handful of ruling whites, and that not of the best class as in antebellum times, casts to-day the entire vote of that section as represented by all of its black and a large majority of its white citizens, at national and state elections.
For instance, the average vote cast for Congressmen by Northern congressional districts during the election of 1898 was over 35,000, while that cast by Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, which are operated in effect on the Mississippi plan, was less than 5,000. The total vote cast for 37 congressmen by those five Southern states was only 184,602, while the total vote polled by the state of New York for 34 congressmen was 1,250,000, i. e. 184,602 electors in those five Mississippi-ized states had actually a larger congressional representation by three than had the 1,250,000 voters of the Empire state. Again, take the case of Kansas, which though casting 100,000 more votes at its congressional election in 1898, than were cast by these same five Southern states combined, yet Kansas had but seven representatives in Congress to guard and promote her peculiar interests against the 37 who sat in the House to guard and promote the peculiar interests of the ruling oligarchy of those five de-republicanized Southern states.
But let us look more closely into this matter. Alabama with a population of 1,828,697, and nine representatives in Congress polled at the Congressional election, in 1902 a total vote of 90,105 for the nine districts, while the new state of Washington with a population of 518,103 and three representatives polled at the same election a total vote of 93,681, i. e., there were 3,000 more votes polled to elect three congressmen in Washington than Alabama polled to elect nine. Again, Mississippi with a population of 1,531,270 and eight representatives in Congress polled at the same election a total vote of 18,058 for the eight congressional districts, while little Idaho with a population of 161,772 and one representative polled at the same time a vote of 57,712, which exceeded more than three times the vote polled by Mississippi for eight representatives. Or let us take Louisiana with a population of 1,381,625 and seven representatives in Congress, and her total vote of 26,265 during the same election for seven districts and contrast these figures with those of Rhode Island with a population of 428,556 and two representatives. The Rhode Island figures are 56,064, or nearly double the vote of Louisiana for seven congressional districts. Or again, let us glance in passing at South Carolina with a population of 1,340,316 and seven representatives in Congress, and New Hampshire with a population of 411,588 and two representatives. The first polled in 1902 at the election of her seven congressmen 32,085 votes, and the second at the election of her two representatives polled at the same time 74,833. In other words, there were nearly 43,000 less votes polled in South Carolina to elect seven Congressmen than were polled in New Hampshire to elect two. To sum up: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina with an aggregate population of 6,106,908 and 31 representatives in Congress cast in 1902 a total vote of 166,576 in 31 congressional districts, while Idaho, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Washington with an aggregate population of 1,500,000, and eight representatives polled at the same general elections a total vote of 282,294 in their eight congressional districts. The average vote for each of the 31 Southern congressional districts was 5,530; while that for each of the eight Northern districts was 35,287. Why Massachusetts alone with a population of 2,805,346 and 14 representatives rolled up a vote to elect these 14 congressmen more than double that which the four Southern states with a population of over 6,000,000 polled to elect their 31 representatives!
Again: At the presidential election last November the combined vote of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, for 39 electors was less than 200,000 or to be exact was just 186,253, while the vote of Massachusetts for 16 electors was 442,732. In other words, the vote of Massachusetts for her 16 representatives in the electoral college, exceeded that of the four Southern states for their 39 in the same body by more than 250,000 polls. Once more: Is it not immensely ominous and significant the marked shrinkage in 1904 of the popular vote for electors in Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, states which had but recently revised their constitutions, as compared with the popular vote of the same states for electors in 1900? There was for example a shrinkage of the popular vote in Alabama of nearly 50,000 polls; in North Carolina the shrinkage amounted to nearly 85,000, and in Virginia it ran up to more than 135,000. These figures are eloquent of great wrongs done the Negro. They are not less eloquent of great dangers which now threaten to subvert free institutions in the Republic.
Since the elections of 1898 things in the South went rapidly in respect to this subject from bad to worse. Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia followed the example of Mississippi and revised their constitutions. This reactionary movement of the Southern oligarchy has reached as far north as Maryland, and the work of aristocratizing her constitution and of Jim-Crowing her laws is now nearing completion. Where is this movement to stop? Will it halt south of Mason and Dixon's line unless drastic measures are speedily adopted by the National Government to arrest it? No, this aristocratic revolution will certainly, unless checked, invade the North, attacking and overthrowing first the political rights of black men in that section, and later those of other classes of citizens industrially and politically feebler than the rest until one after another of the states now free shall have succumbed to the rule of class and plutocratic power. Then indeed will the undoing of the 14th and the 15th amendments, and of democratic institutions in America, be complete. Not until then will the movement, which is fast aristocratizing the Republic, stop its steady advance. I am no alarmist, but am telling the sober truth. Those who have eyes to see, let them look around at the ominous signs of this advancing evil. Those who have ears to hear, may hear everywhere about them the foreboding sounds of this rising flood of wrong and inequality, this growing disregard for law, this denial to the people of a voice in government, whether state, colonial or national, which characterize the present period of our national history.
It will not be impertinent for me to add by way of concluding this article, a few words regarding some of the political consequences, which would be sure to follow a reduction of Southern representation in Congress and the electoral college. It would, in the first place, reduce the political strength of the South as a factor in national legislation, diminish its relative importance as an element in national politics. That section is insolent, exacting and aggressive to-day on the Negro question because it has so much numerical strength in Congress and the electoral college by reason of its suppressed Negro vote. Reduce that strength by a judicious blood-letting to the number of twenty-five or thirty-five representatives and there will follow in due time a corresponding reduction of its arrogance and aggressiveness on the race question. For as it declines in relative strength in Congress and the electoral college it will decline in relative importance in management and leadership of the democratic party also. It will gradually lose its controlling influence over that party, cease ultimately to dominate it on the Negro question. The relative decline of the South in Congress and the electoral college-means, of course, the relative increase of the North in the same branch—means that in time the North will pay less heed to the claims of the South, to its threats, and more to the claims, to the case of the Negro. It means more. The relative decline of the South as a factor in national politics means the relative increase of the northern wing of the Democratic party in the control of that party, in the shaping for that party of a more liberal policy on the Negro question. For as the northern wing of this party gains in relative strength, in numerical importance over that of the South, it will be tempted more and more to solicit the support of the Negro vote of the North. In close elections and in pivotal states the Democrats of the North will thereupon make liberal declarations and positive bids in order to win this vote from the Republican party.