quired only to be able to read or understand the Constitution when read to him, though in Virginia this last requirement was only for two years; and after two years the voter must be able to read and write.

Louisiana excepts those whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, and Virginia excepts until 1904 those who were soldiers or seamen or whose fathers served as soldiers or seamen in time of war.

Vermont, on the other hand, has the singular requirement that the voter must "obtain the approbation of the local board of civil authority -a requirement which would seem to place the qualification wholly at the mercy of in power.

the party

Though the representation in Congress of the Southern States would appear at present to be greater than the recorded vote of those States would entitle them to, the inequality is by no means so real as it appears, and is not greater than that which exists between some of the Eastern and Western States.*

* For example, in 1880 the vote of

North Carolina was 81 per cent. of its voting population.

66

Massachusetts 56

South Carolina

Rhode Island

82

66

37

[It

It has been well shown by the same distinguished member of the New York Bar already quoted that "the disparity between the Southern States where the ignorant Negro vote has been practically eliminated and the Eastern States, though glaring, is less than that between the Eastern States and some of the Western States. For example, " Rhode Island's vote is 1.59 times as great as Alabama's, but South

Mississippi was 49 per cent. of its voting population.

Maryland's vote for each Congressman at the last Con

gressional election (1902) averaged:

Dakota's is 3.39 as great as that of Rhode Island. Vermont's is 2.22 times as great as Florida's, but Utah's is 3.01 as great as Vermont's. Maine's is 2.36 as great as Georgia's, but Colorado's is 3.48 times as great as Maine's.” *

The figures cited fail to give the strength of the Southern vote. The small vote in the Southern States is due partly to the fact that the ascendancy of one political party is so great that voters do not feel it necessary to attend the polls.

In the next place, though it was frankly admitted that the motive of the disfranchisement clauses was to disfranchise the ignorant colored vote, while the ignorant white vote was admitted for a time, provided the voters or their fathers had been soldiers, this is but a temporary inequality; and that the ignorant colored vote does not come within the grandfather clause or other saving clauses is an incident of the time. In a comparatively short time the effect of these saving clauses will have passed away and the suffrage will be based on a purely educational or property qualification.

writer in The Outlook of June 13, 1903, in an article entitled, 'Negro Suffrage in

* Address of Mr. Charles A. Gardiner, cited ante.

But

the South," says: "How far do they exclude him (the Negro) in point of fact? In answering this question the reader must note that in three of the States, Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia, a Negro who possesses property amounting in value to $300 and has paid his taxes may vote. He may not be able to read and write, he may not be able to understand the Constitution when it is read to him. if he has had the industry, the sobriety, the thrift which have enabled him to accumulate taxable property to the amount of $300, he has the ballot. How many Negroes there are in the South who under this provision are admitted to the ballot we have no means of know. ing. It has been estimated that the total ownings of Negroes in the Southern States mount up to $300,000,000 worth of personal and real estate. It is officially reported that in Virginia they own one-twenty-sixth of all the land in the State. These facts would seem to indicate that a not inconsiderable number of Negroes are admitted to the ballot in the Southern States under the property qualification. On the other hand, a considerable white population has been disfranchised under this property-qualification clause. We are informed by a Southern cor

respondent, whose means of acquaintance justify our placing some confidence in his statement, that in Alabama fully fifty thousand white men, under the practical operation of the Constitution, by non-payment of poll-taxes or other clauses, have been disfranchised."

It may also be well to consider the effect of such a penalizing measure on the future of the Negro himself. To adopt it would be to violate the one principle on which the permanent advance of the Negro race must be founded. That is, the recognition, even at this late hour, by the Negro that he must stand on his own merits and is to be left to work out politically, as well as economically, his own future. To adopt it would mislead him into thinking he is still the ward of the nation and is to be supported by it, irrespective of his conduct-an idea to which may be traced a considerable portion of all that has retarded the Negro's advance in the past. It will tend to divert once more his aim from the paths of industry to which it is being turned by the wisest of his friends. It will engender a new hostility to him on the part of the stronger race, on whose friendship his future welfare must depend.

Finally, should such a measure be adopted,