olored men with the ballot should be rated in terms
of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not,
violates no rule of business ethics. And politics is business, is the big
business is it not, or ought it not to be the big business of all self
governing peoples, who would maintain justice and freedom for themselves
and transmit them unimpaired to their posterity? Colonel Roosevelt, as the
leader of the new party, recognized at his full political value the Negro
in states where his vote is counted, and perceived the very slight value,
potential and actual, as a party asset of the Negro in states where his
vote is not counted. He and the Progressive Party have not engaged in the
big business of American politics for their health or amusement, but for
the purpose of carrying forward to success great and far reaching measures
of reform, which exclude from their benefits no race or class on account
of color or sex but includes all American citizens, black and white alike.
But to do this, to realize on their party promises and pledges to the
people, they must have votes, not mere good will which can not translate
itself into effective support on election day.

But the ex-President's action at Chicago goes deeper than this primal need
of his party for votes. It reaches down to the springs of fundamental
social and political changes at the South in relation to its race
question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda,
which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse it of its sins
against law, justice and democracy. I do not mean to belittle in any way
other agencies now at work on the solution of our terrible race problem,
such as education or wealth or agitation. Not at all, for they are most
important, but without the ballot they are impotent to give the relief so
much needed in the South. There must be added to them this something else,
this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from
the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the
evil consequences of their race prejudice. And this one thing needful, I
believe, the Progressive Party brings to the solution of the problem, and
that it formed the underlying motive and the statesmanlike purpose of the
action at Chicago last August of Theodore Roosevelt.

ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE,
1415 CORCORAN STREET N. W.,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

Transcriber's Notes:

The words "today" and