the whites. This last feature, while essentially unfair, is
a practical grievance to the negroes so long and only so long as the two
races stand as directly opposed forces in politics. Otherwise it is
questionable whether the class who are called on to earn the suffrage by
intelligence or productive industry are not really as well off as the
class to whom it is given regardless of merit.

But in its practical operation the system is so elastic--and
unquestionably was so designed--that it can be easily applied for the
exclusion of a great part of those who nominally are admitted to the
suffrage. The "character" and "understanding" tests leave virtually full
power with the registration officers. There can be no reasonable doubt
that in these six States the suffrage is virtually denied to negroes to
an extent utterly beyond any fair construction of the law. Mr. Charles
W. Chestnutt, in his paper on _Disfranchisement_, cites the case of
Alabama, where the census of 1900 gave the negro males of voting age as
181,471, while in 1903 less than 3000 were registered as voters. And
even in States like Georgia, where suffrage is by law universal, ways of
practical nullification are often applied,--as for example by exclusion
from the nominating primaries, in which the results are principally
determined.

Without the need of legal forms, there is a practically universal
exclusion of all negroes from public offices, filled by local election
or appointment, throughout most of the South. Their appointment to
Federal offices in that region, though very rare, is always made the
occasion of vehement protest.

The theory generally avowed among Southern whites, that the two races
must be carefully kept separate, is apt to mean in practice that the
black man must everywhere take the lower place. At various points that
disposition encounters the natural and cultivated sentiments of
justice, benevolence, and the common good, and now one and now the
other prevails. Thus, there have been efforts to restrict the common
school education of the blacks. It has been proposed, and by prominent
politicians, to spend for this purpose only the amount raised by
taxation of the blacks themselves. There has appeared a disposition to
confine their education to the rudimentary branches and to a narrow type
of industrialism. Strong opposition has developed to the opening either
by public or private aid of what is known as "liberal education" in the
college