ness, because it represents what I have heard
wherever I have gone in the North to make inquiries regarding the
Negro problem--the North, wrongly or rightly, is to-day more than half
convinced that the South is right in imposing some measure of limitation
upon the franchise. There is now, in short, no disposition anywhere in
the North to interfere in internal affairs in the South--not even with
the force of public opinion.

What other force, then, is to be invoked? Shall the Negro revolt? Shall
he migrate? Shall he prosecute his case in the courts? The very asking
of these questions suggests the inevitable reply.

We might as well, here and now, dismiss the idea of force, express or
implied. There are times of last resort which call for force; but this
is not such a time.

What other alternatives are there?

Accepting the laws as they are, then, there are two methods of
procedure, neither sensational nor exciting. I have no quick cure to
suggest, but only old and tried methods of commonplace growth.

The underlying causes of the trouble in the country being plainly
ignorance and prejudice, we must meet ignorance and prejudice with their
antidotes, education and association.

Every effort should be made to extend free education among both Negroes
and white people. A great extension of education is now going forward in
the South. The Negro is not by any means getting his full share; but,
as certainly as sunshine makes things grow, education in the South will
produce tolerance. That there is already such a growing tolerance no one
who has talked with the leading white men in the South can doubt. The
old fire-eating, Negro-baiting leaders of the Tillman-Vardaman type
are swiftly passing away: a far better and broader group is coming into
power.

In his last book, Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama, expresses this
new point of view when he says,--

'There is no question here as to the unrestricted admission [to the
ballot] of the great masses of our ignorant and semi-ignorant blacks.
I know no advocate of such admission. But the question is as to whether
the individuals of the race, upon conditions or restrictions legally
imposed and fairly administered, shall be admitted to adequate and
increasing representation in the electorate. And as that question
is more seriously and more generally considered, many of the leading
publicists of the South, I am glad to say, are quietly resolved that the
answer shall be in th