situation to any material extent until he gets the ballot, a voice in the
government of those states. He can not obtain a voice in those governments
of and by himself. He must get help from some power outside of himself.
But from whom and in what direction ought he to look for it? Not certainly
from the North, from the Republican Party. For they gave up long ago
trying to solve the problem how to make a vote in that section count as
much as a vote in the solid South. They will not again enact a Force Bill
or attempt to do so or anything like it. They have during recent years
made no movement to execute that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which
provides for a reduction of Southern representation in the lower Branch of
Congress proportioned to the number of the disfranchised male population
of those states, and they have in fact no disposition to do so. On the
contrary non-interference is the ominous word which now gags the Northern
people and press, its pulpit and platform and hobbles the action of the
general government. Indeed, the outgoing occupant of the White House has
carried the policy of non-interference to extreme limits. For he it is who
laid down the rule at the beginning of his administration, and has
observed it strictly for four years, that it would be unwise to make
appointments of colored men to federal office in the South whenever the
South objects to such appointments. In consequence of the consistent
enforcement of this rule colored federal office-holders in the South are
like angels' visits to that section, few and far between. The South, as
we have seen, has succeeded most thoroughly in depriving the Negro in its
midst of any voice in its governments and it has shut him out of state
offices, and now thanks to President Taft, has at last succeeded in
depriving him of holding federal office in its midst likewise.

But there yet remains to the Southern colored man a tattered and
bedraggled remnant of his citizenship in that section, if indeed even that
shall be left to him four years hence. I refer to his quadrennial
appearance as a delegate in Republican National Conventions, where for a
brief hour he enjoys the spotlight importance of a political supernumerary
on the party stage. Since 1884, there has been an increasing inclination
among Republican leaders to reduce the representation of the party's
Southern wing in National Conventions to a number proportioned to the size
of its vote on election