shall square with
that amendment. Of course, the mere adoption of a constitutional law
is only one step in the right direction. It must be fairly and justly
enforced as well. In time both will come. Hence it is clear to all that
the domination of an ignorant, irresponsible element can be prevented
by constitutional laws which shall exclude from voting both negroes
and whites not having education or other qualifications thought to
be necessary for a proper electorate. The danger of the control of an
ignorant electorate has therefore passed. With this change, the interest
which many of the Southern white citizens take in the welfare of the
negroes has increased. The colored men must base their hope on the
results of their own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and business
success, as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy which they may
receive from their white neighbors of the South.

There was a time when Northerners who sympathized with the negro in his
necessary struggle for better conditions sought to give him the suffrage
as a protection to enforce its exercise against the prevailing sentiment
of the South. The movement proved to be a failure. What remains is the
fifteenth amendment to the Constitution and the right to have statutes
of States specifying qualifications for electors subjected to the test
of compliance with that amendment. This is a great protection to the
negro. It never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed. If
it had not passed, it might be difficult now to adopt it; but with it
in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern legislation must and will
tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes of the States meet the
test of this amendment and are not otherwise in conflict with the
Constitution and laws of the United States, it is not the disposition
or within the province of the Federal Government to interfere with the
regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs. There is in the
South a stronger feeling than ever among the intelligent well-to-do, and
influential element in favor of the industrial education of the negro
and the encouragement of the race to make themselves useful members of
the community. The progress which the negro has made in the last fifty
years, from slavery, when its statistics are reviewed, is marvelous, and
it furnishes every reason to hope that in the next twenty-five years
a still greater improvement in his condition as a productive member
o