gro and the laboring white man. Powerful
influences are at work even to-day to impress upon the Negro the fact
that he must look to the business men of the South alone for protection
and recognition of his rights, while at the same time these very same
influences inflame the laboring white man against the black man with
fears of social equality and race fusion. The Negro, being a laborer,
must see that the cause of labor is his cause, that his elevation can be
largely achieved by having the sympathy, support, and co-operation of
that growing organization of working men the world over which is working
out the larger problems of human freedom and economic opportunity.

In the third place, wherever in this country the Negro has the
franchise, and where by complying with requirements he can regain it,
let him exercise it faithfully and constantly, but let him do so as an
independent and not as a partisan, for his political salvation in the
future depends upon his voting for men and measures, rather than with
any particular party.

For two hundred and fifty years the black man of America toiled in the
South without pay and without thanks; he cleared her forests, tunneled
her mountains, bridged her streams, built her cottages and palaces,
enriched her fields with his sweat and blood, nursed her children,
protected her women and guarded her homes from the midnight marauder,
the devouring flames, and approaching disease and death. The colored
American willingly and gladly enlisted and fought in every war waged by
this country, from the first conflict with the Indians to the last
battle in Cuba and the Philippines; when enfranchised he voted the
rebellious States back into the Union, and from that day until this he
has, as a race, never used his ballot, unless corrupted or intimidated
by white men, to the detriment of any part of America. When in power in
the South, though for the most part ignorant and just out of slavery and
surrounded by vindictive ex-slave owners and mercenary, corrupted and
corrupting "carpet baggers," he did what his former masters had failed
for centuries to do--he established the free school system, erected
asylums for the insane and indigent poor, purged the statute-books of
disgraceful marriage laws and oppressive and inhuman labor regulations,
revised and improved the penal code, and by many other worthy acts
proved that the heart of the race was, and is, in the right place, and
that whenever the Ame