where, and if not denied the wisdom of his
receiving it is seriously questioned. The right to hold property and live
in it wherever he may purchase it is denied and restricted. The right to
work at whatever occupation he may be fitted is denied, and his
opportunities for earning a living are confined to narrower and narrower
limits each year. Even the fundamental right of a slave to petition when
the yoke is galling is denied him, and when he would assemble to formulate
just complaints in a way protected by the law of the land, he is accused
of whining and of stirring up bad feeling between the races, and so the
list might be extended indefinitely. The contest for the future must be a
constant effort to educate public opinion to the point where it will
concede to the Negro inalienable rights: The right to vote, the right to
an education in all that the term implies, the right to employment in all
occupations, the right to make of himself and of his people and of his
neighbors all that they may become under the most favored conditions. In
short, to use the phrase of Kipling, the ideal sought is, "Leave to live,
by no man's leave, underneath the law."

The effect of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
the Bailey case is to render null and of no effect all of these labor laws
which either directly or indirectly resulted in compulsory slavery. In the
Bailey case the Supreme Court held that although the State statute in
terms appeared to punish fraud, the inevitable purpose is to punish for
failure to perform contracts for labor, thus compelling such performances
and it violates the thirteenth amendment to the constitution and is
unconstitutional. And again the further principle was announced that a
constitutional prohibition can not be transgressed indirectly by court or
statutory presumption any more than by direct enactment. The Court said:
"The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits the control by coercion of the
personal services of one man for the benefit of another and that the
Federal Penal Act is violated by any State resolution which seeks to
compel the services of labor by making it a crime to fail and refuse to
perform contract employment!" This decision rendered by Mr. Justice Hughes
and dissented from by Mr. Justice Holmes, an ex-Union soldier, and Mr.
Justice Lurton, an ex-Confederate soldier, goes as far as any decision in
upholding the spirit and intent of the Thirteenth Amendment as any
decisio