litical question is
inwrought in the whole situation.

"After the last word has been said in favor of the capitalist
notion of race elevation, it is still found to contain the
wonderfully fecund germ of repression. To sustain a notion from
generation to generation that the Negro should be denied
participation in the political life of his nation necessitates
an atmosphere charged with the spirit of repression, a
voracious guest, whose appetite calls for food other than the
dainties set before him.

"The making of official life in the South independent of Negro
sentiment was evidently intended to cause white men to feel
free to act according to their own instincts, undeterred by
calculations as to the possible effects of their course on the
attitude of the Negro toward them.

"With repression the order of the day, and the process of the
survival of the fittest operating along this plane, that man
who best exemplifies the repressive faculty will survive in the
political warfare and thus will be brought to the front the
element out of touch with the broadening influences of the
age, whose vision is yet bounded by the narrow horizon of race.

"The administration of the government, then, inevitably falls
into the hands of the less refined and a contemned race of an
alien blood is handed over to them to be governed absolutely.
As might be expected under a system that picks its rougher
spirits for rulership, the governing force is often worse in
its attitude toward Negroes than are the great body of whites.
Instead therefore of the government being the guide, piloting
the people to broader conceptions, the governing power often
sets in motion brutalizing tendencies that eventually sweep
down and affect the people.

"Local sentiment has been invoked to hold in check the wrathful
outpourings of United States senators, legislatures have held
in check rampant governors, and cities have cried out against
the acts of legislatures imposing repressive measures not
warranted by local conditions, things that signify that
repression sends to the front men whose tendency is to lower
rather than advance civilization.

"It is generally conceded that the drift of the Negro
population of the South toward the cities is due to the lack of
p