for his advancement, like industrial and the higher education and the
acquisition of property, and organized agitation in the North for his
rights can do little to rescue him from the deep pit into which American
race prejudice has pushed and penned him. The colored American child has a
poorer chance to rise in the scale of being to-day than had the colored
American child of a generation ago. He has a poorer chance in the South in
spite of his increased educational opportunities and accomplishments, and
he has a poorer chance in the North. For as the condition of the race
grows worse and its citizenship deteriorates politically and civilly in
the South, it will communicate to that part of it resident in the North
something of its own sad lot, legal and industrial limitations and
contracting prospects and opportunities. This is the inevitable fate of a
ballotless race or class in an industrial democracy like ours. Such is the
fate which awaits the American Negro unless he can manage to get the right
to vote in the South. And this fate he can not escape so long as he
remains a ballotless man--with no weapon of defense against the white
man's race prejudice, which is regnant in his home and church and
government and press and mills and shops and trades and schools. It is as
impossible for the Negro to escape from his blind alley without the ballot
as it is for some foolish fly, imprisoned on a window pane, to find its
way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its
restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the
figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he
can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and
wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be
able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights
of the Negro as laborer and citizen. But until they are made to respond to
his claim for social justice and civil rights he will continue in the
future as he is to-day the helpless victim of the peonage and convict
lease systems, of the plantation lease and credit systems, of contract
labor and "Jim Crow" laws, of lynching and the inequitable distribution of
the public school funds between the races. I can not repeat too often that
such monstrous depression of a part of Southern labor is not less bad for
the whites than it is for the blacks. Nothing else can possibly come of it
in the futu