egro? Can we
establish a mass of black laborers and artisans and landholders in the
South who, by law and public opinion, have absolutely no voice in
shaping the laws under which they live and work? Can the modern
organization of industry, assuming as it does free democratic
government and the power and ability of the laboring classes to compel
respect for their welfare,--can this system be carried out in the South
when half its laboring force is voiceless in the public councils and
powerless in its own defence? 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 execute the laws, and how they
shall do it; 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 man's side of a current controversy. Daily
the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as
protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression.
The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are
executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black
people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused
law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would
rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.

I should be the last one to deny the patent weaknesses and shortcomings
of the Negro people; I should be the last to withhold sympathy from the
white South in its efforts to solve its intricate social problems. I
freely acknowledged that it is possible, and sometimes best, that a
partially undeveloped people should be ruled by the best of their
stronger and better neighbors for their own good, until such time as
they can start and fight the world's battles alone. I have already
pointed out how sorely in need of such economic and spiritual guidance
the emancipated Negro was, and I am quite willing to admit that if the
representatives of the best white Southern public opinion were the
ruling and guiding powers in the South to-day the conditions indicated
would be fairly well fulfilled. But the point I have insisted upon and
now emphasize again, is that the best opinion of the South to-day is
not the ruling opinion. That to leave the Negro helpless and without a
ballot to-day is to leave him