ocracy, history gives no record
of a permanent government conducted on this basis. Interests have always
been stronger than numbers. The Negroes in the North, therefore, should
not on the eve of the economic revolution follow the advice of their
misguided and misleading race leaders who are diverting their attention
from their actual welfare to a specialization in politics. To concentrate
their efforts on electing a few Negroes to office wherever the blacks are
found in the majority, would exhibit the narrowness of their oppressors.
It would be as unwise as the policy of the Republican party of setting
aside a few insignificant positions like that of Recorder of Deeds,
Register of the Treasury and Auditor of the Navy as segregated jobs for
Negroes. Such positions have furnished a nucleus for the large, worthless,
office-seeking class of Negroes in Washington, who have established the
going of the people of the city toward pretence and sham.

The Negroes should support representative men of any color or party, if
they stand for a square deal and equal rights for all. The new Negroes in
the North, therefore, will, as so many of their race in New York,
Philadelphia and Chicago are now doing, ally themselves with those men who
are fairminded and considerate of the man far down, and seek to embrace
their many opportunities for economic progress, a foundation for political
recognition, upon which the race must learn to build. Every race in the
universe must aspire to becoming a factor in politics; but history shows
that there is no short route to such success. Like other despised races
beset with the prejudice and militant opposition of self-styled superiors,
the Negroes must increase their industrial efficiency, improve their
opportunities to make a living, develop the home, church and school, and
contribute to art, literature, science and philosophy to clear the way to
that political freedom of which they cannot be deprived.

The entire country will be benefited by this upheaval. It will be helpful
even to the South. The decrease in the black population in those
communities where the Negroes outnumber the whites will remove the fear of
_Negro domination_, one of the causes of the backwardness of the
South and its peculiar civilization. Many of the expensive precautions
which the southern people have taken to keep the Negroes down, much of the
terrorism incited to restrain the blacks from self-assertion will no
longer be con