In this morass of rottenness the state expenses amounted to $2,000,000 in 1872, while the annual expenses were normally $400,000.

Decency, intelligence, and property were subjected to the domination of a black, ignorant, pauper multitude. Vice superseded. A bloody riot with the incensed whites occurred in Edgefield county in January, 1875, in which lives were lost on both sides.

In Georgia the state debt increased from $5,827,000 to $18,183,000 from 1868 to 1870, and the state bonds became almost unmarketable. Ballot boxes were tampered with and election returns falsified.

"In Virginia," writes Mr. Robert Stiles, "I appeared in circuit court before a bench on which sat a so-called judge, who had the day before been a clerk in a village grocery store, and who was no better fitted for the dignity and duty devolving upon him than any other negro grocery boy."

In Mississippi, as Mr. Clowes expressed it, “It was a fool's paradise for negroes."

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1867 was manipulated to show 45,218 white and 84,463 colored votes. Only six white members succeeded in obtaining seats in the Senate.

Corruption and bribery reigned supreme.

The New Orleans Republican, in which Governor Warmoth, a tricky "carpet bagger," was principal shareholder, received in one year $1,140,881 for public printing.

The negroes became intensely proud and began to assert themselves. This led to the organization of the Ku Klux Klan, an order of southern whites, improperly called white caps, sworn to stamp out African rule, and who caused the mysterious disappearance of many a negro and white instigator of negro outrages. They frequently raided and frightened whole communities of superstitious negroes almost into hysterics. An incident of this kind occurred one night in a little town in southern Kentucky. A party of the "Ku Klux" came quietly into the negro quarters of the little burg about 12 o'clock, when every resident was sleeping soundly, and after carefully tying several small dogs in flour sacks, dropped them simultaneously down as many chimneys of the negro dwellings. The result can easily be imagined. An uproar and stampede followed, in which cries of "De Debbil am a comin' sho!" "Oh, Lawd a massy!" etc., were mingled in ridiculous accents. A few pistol shots from the retreating Ku Klux only added to the pandemonium.

The following letter from one of the original members of the Klan, now a United States senatorial clerk, will be of interest in this connection:

C. W. MELICK,

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 6, 1908.

MY DEAR SIR: Replying to yours of the 4th, I will say that I have now in advanced preparation a book giving a history of the origin, purposes and accomplishments of the Ku Klux Klan. Responding to your questions seriatim, there was only one order of the Ku Klux Klan, without any branches. General Forrest, who was the Supreme Wizard of the Klan, in his testimony before the "Joint Commission to Investigate Conditions in the Insurrectionary States," placed the membership at about 500,000. The Klan was organized in April, 1867, at Pulaski, Tennessee, and was disbanded by order of the Supreme Wizard in 1869. It operated in nearly all of the southern states, but its principal field of action was in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina. The Klan was originally organized for pastime, but having adopted a peculiar garb and practiced some spectacular antics that impressed the superstitious negroes, it was soon observed that it had a controlling effect over the negroes who were beginning to go into excesses under the inspiration of mean white men, and so the Klan was early turned into somewhat of a political organization. Under evil influences, the negro was fast rushing upon his own destruction, for it would have soon been necessary to either annihilate him or give him full sway over southern interests and southern people. The punitive efforts of the Klan were almost always directed at the white instigator of negro deviltry, realizing that the negro himself was most tractable and could be easily kept within safe bounds if his evil advisers were suppressed. The final result of the movement was to get rid of these white scalawags and save the negro from annihilation. The Ku Klux Klan stood resolutely for law and order, and it was a necessary adjunct of civilization then, because the courts were inadequate and in many places indisposed to protect the property interests and personal rights of the people, and they had to take things into their own hands. I have no kind of doubt that but for the Ku Klux Klan there would inevitably have been a war of races that would have resulted in the destruction of the negro race, and it would have been far more disastrous to southern property interests than even the civil war, and my opinion is that the Ku Klux Klan was one of the great movements ordained by Providence along the ages to further civilization and human progress, and that when the final truth is known history will say that it did more for the negro himself than anything else appertaining to his emancipation from slavery and ignorance.

Very truly yours,

From a copy of the original Prelate of the Ku Klux Klan, which two of the members showed me, I judge that its mission was purely of a patriotic nature. The majority of the excesses in such lines were committed by unscrupulous bands of night riders, disguised in the name of the Ku Klux, after that organization had disbanded.

Northern politicians took advantage of the situation, and before every election of any consequence many of them went down through the South, or sent their representatives, and solicited votes, and at election time collected them. Naturally, those who covered the most territory secured the largest number of votes, regardless of his policies. These electioneers were called "carpet baggers.'

From that time until the present the negro vote has been a disgrace to civilization. There are many places in Maryland and Virginia where

the negroes line up or sit on a fence in a row near the polls waiting for politicians to come along and make bids for their vote. There are some places in the states farther south where they are kept away from the polls entirely.

The full-blooded negro has little or no patriotism. They have no country they can call their own, and, like you or I, or anyone else under the same circumstances, would have little interest in government affairs. They were frequently made to think that when they voted the heavens would open and send them a blessing, or something similar would happen. Since they found out differently they vote principally the way they are paid for it, or influenced by white politicians.

In some states they are not allowed to vote unless they are able to interpret the names on the ticket.

The shrewd politicians meet this difficulty by holding meetings in schoolhouses and halls every evening for a week or so previous to election, and instructing the negroes by the use of a ballot-box and ticket prepared similar to those used on election day.

A few years after the civil war Abraham Lincoln's picture was used on the ticket, and anyone who wished to vote the straight Republican ticket would make their mark on this picture. When public sentiment demanded a more intelligent vote, this system was abandoned for separate party tickets, where a straight ticket could be voted or each separate name scratched.

This has recently been abandoned for a single ticket, with all the parties included, and the names intermixed. A great deal of instruction or scheming is therefore required in order to obtain an intelligent negro vote. All soiled or improperly folded ballots are also discarded. Several instances have been brought to my notice where the political instructors cut holes in sheets of pasteboard or brown paper in such a manner that when placed directly over the ticket a scratch could be made through each hole and the names of the desired persons thus scratched.

These pasteboards were folded and distributed among the negro voters, who carried them to the polls in their pockets and used them when voting.

I also know of one negro, a Bill Scott, of the fifth district of Baltimore county, Maryland, who in the fall election of 1899 was told to swear by the Bible that he was a legal resident of that district, and, not seeming to understand what was required, began to eat the leaves of the Bible on which he was to place his hand. The Bible was used in some districts at that time for swearing in voters. After such a display of ignorance he was permitted to cast his vote. A highly intelligent and patriotic piece of business for United States citizens!

All of the southern states have adopted laws making the eligibility requirement for voting so rigid, and aimed directly at the negro, that

they disqualify the majority of them. The substance of the law in the southern states, as a whole, differing slightly in some of them, is as follows:

No person may be allowed to vote unless he can read and intelligently interpret a part of the Constitution; who himself, or wife, has not $500 or more; or unless his grandfather voted before the war.

The first part of this law applies equally to the white and black-the educational requirement. The "grandfather clause" and property requirement admits most of the whites regardless of education.

This law seems unjust to a Northern or Western man, but the South of necessity had to adopt some such means to control the negro rabble. Any sane white man under similar conditions would have used his influence to adopt similar laws. Virginia and Maryland were the last states to pass such laws. Virginia passed hers in 1902, and Maryland followed in 1908.

A great many of the Southern men whose business a high tariff benefits are Republicans on national issues and Democrats on local issues. Many of the rice, sugar, and tobacco dealers belong to this list.

Not only have the white vcters of the Southern states controlled the elections ever since 1876 by combining in the Democratic party, but they have recently adopted that method in the Republican party in Virginia.

On April 8th, 1908, the sixth congressional district of that state held its Republican convention to elect delegates to the National Convention in Chicago.

When the chairman took his seat he said: "This is a white man's meeting, representing a white Republican party, and any statement to the contrary is a lie."

There were about twenty negroes present, who repeatedly tried to gain the floor, but were as often and as readily silenced.

This is the first record of a Republican meeting south of the Mason and Dixon line in which negroes were not permitted to participate.

Occasionally a negro will become broad-minded enough to say, as did Mr. A. M. Church (colored), of Vicksburg, Miss.: "The mass of negroes would do themselves and the country more good if the ballotbox were out of their reach." Many of them, however, are among the class which the following represents:

On the 23rd of March, 1908, a party of colored men from certain districts of the South visited the White House and complained to President Roosevelt about ill-treatment at the polls.

They were not from Maryland or Virginia, or they would have received fifty cents and a glass of whiskey apiece for their vote, instead of being driven from the polls.

CHAPTER IV.

RATE OF INCREASE OF THe Negro.

The rate of increase of the negro is, as a whole, less than that of the white, partly because the mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons seldom intermarry with full-blooded negroes, but intermarry among themselves or with whites, and their offspring eventually becomes so near white that they are classed as such.

The chief cause, however, for the lesser rate of increase is due to the fact that, although their birth rate is higher, their death rate is so much higher than their birth rate that the result is a lower per cent of increase.

The higher death rate is obviously due to their unsanitary habits of living. When we see them living, as Mr. Bond says, in Chapter VII, "like hogs!—yes, sir, like hogs!" we wonder that some of them live as long as they do. I know of whole families of them who have died of tuberculosis contracted by unsanitary living.

Not only is this true of the full-blooded negroes who colonize in the rural swamp districts of South Carolina and Louisiana and have become so degraded as to live like wild animals, speaking in South Carolina a dialect composed of a mixture of degenerate English and the original African tongue, and in Louisiana a French yiddish, but in parts of Washington, D. C., there is, aside from dialect, a semblance of similar conditions.

Right in Washington, where some of the greatest efforts have been made to educate and develop the best that there is in the negro, where he has had exceptional educational, religious, and social opportunities, the illegitimate births among the colored population of that city were, in 1879, 17.6 per cent; in 1893, 27 per cent, and in 1894, 26.46 per cent. During those years the per cent of illegitimate births among the whites of Washington was, in 1879, 2.32 per cent; 1893, 2.82 per cent, and in 1894, 2.56 per cent.

Our fair capital is one of the most beautiful cities in the Union, but its beauty is confined to the government buildings, parks, and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts avenues. Go to Monkey Hollow, Black-and-Tan Court, or any other negro suburb, or to the city jail any morning, and you will have a different version of the national capital.