from the choice of candidates, and other issues
come forward. A majority vote, too, pacifies the minority of all races,
where the act of a legislative body leaves the suspicion of unfair
advantage taken by unrepresentative politicians. By the exigencies of
the situation the referendum has been invoked to take both the saloon
problem and its share of the race problem "out of politics." The lesson
is applicable wherever race or nationality conflicts with democracy.
With questions of religious belief eliminated by the constitution, and
questions of personal habits eliminated by the referendum, other
questions of race antagonism will be eliminated by the initiative and
the referendum.[107]

=Suffrage.=--The climax of liberality in donating the suffrage to all
races and conditions was reached with the fifteenth amendment in 1869.
At that time not only had the negro been enfranchised; but nearly a
score of Western and Southern states and territories had enfranchised
the alien. So liberal were these states in welcoming the immigrant that
they allowed him to vote as soon as he declared his intention to take
out naturalization papers. This declaration, under the federal law, is
made at least two years before the papers are granted, and it may be
made as soon as the immigrant has landed. Thus in some of those states
he could vote as soon as he acquired a legal residence, that is, four or
four and one-half years before he acquired citizenship. Several of these
states have recently changed these laws, but there remain nine that
continue to accept the alien as a voter.

In the Eastern states such generosity was not granted by law but was
practised by fraud. Naturalization papers are issued by federal courts
and by state courts of record. The law gives the judge much discretion,
for he is required to refuse the certificate if he is not satisfied that
the alien is of good moral character, attached to the Constitution, and
well disposed. But so careless or crowded are the judges that seldom
have they examined the applicants. Indeed the political managers have
had the option of judges and could take their immigrants to the court
that would shut its eyes. Many thousands of fraudulent papers have been
secured in this way, beginning at the very time when the naturalization
law was enacted in 1802, but increasing enormously during the past forty
years.[108]

Finally, in 1906, Congress enacted a law giving to the Bureau of
Immigration co