day. But the leaders have not yet got their
courage to the sticking point to tackle this proposition, perhaps because
they have not been willing to tackle the prior one of a reduction of
Southern representation in Congress, and perhaps for other good and
sufficient considerations of an emergency character, they have allowed the
matter to drift and to let for the time being well enough alone.

But whatever has been the motive of that party for its policy of
inactivity and indecision on this question heretofore, there are not
wanting signs of a change of that policy presently into one of activity
and decision. It seems probable that reduction of representation of its
Southern wing in its National Conventions will occupy a prominent place on
the program of Republican reorganization within the next four years. That
party in a half dozen Southern States has been called in derision by its
enemies a "ghost party" and a "phantom party." And such it is in reality.
It is dead and I do not believe that its corpse can ever be galvanized
into life again. There are decomposing parts of it known as "Regulars" and
"Lily Whites," stricken both with the microbes of death, obscenely alive
with the maggots of place-hunters. It is powerless to dissolve the solid
South and to restore to that section bi-party in place of one-party
governments. It is wholly incapable of attracting Southern whites in
sufficient numbers to raise it to the rank of a party of opposition, or to
give to it the barest chance of achieving success at the polls. Its very
name is a political bugaboo and makes it a party impossibility in those
states. Since 1876, rather than utilize it as a party of opposition, the
Southern whites have preserved their sectional solidity and one-party
governments, notwithstanding the fact that many of their more enlightened
and far seeing men have felt that such a course is bad for their section
as it would be bad for any group of states, North, East or West in the
Union.

Just at this point let me refer in passing to sundry causes which are
affecting adversely the Negro's status as a citizen, and are contributing
by their collateral pressure to force him into a sort of political and
industrial blind alley of our American civilization. The Southern
propaganda against the Negro is advancing apace in the North by many dark
and devious ways and by many subtle and potent means. Northern capital and
enterprise, which are exploiting the South in