impelled to buy this privilege from the none too eager white South, by
conceding away the civil and political rights of those whom they would
benefit. They have, indeed, gone farther than the Southerners themselves
in approving the disfranchisement of the colored race. Most Southern men,
now that they have carried their point and disfranchised the Negro, are
willing to admit, in the language of a recent number of the _Charleston
Evening Post_, that "the attitude of the Southern white man toward the
Negro is incompatible with the fundamental ideas of the republic." It
remained for our Clevelands and Abbotts and Parkhursts to assure them that
their unlawful course was right and justifiable, and for the most
distinguished Negro leader to declare that "every revised Constitution
throughout the Southern States has put a premium upon intelligence,
ownership of property, thrift and character." So does every penitentiary
sentence put a premium upon good conduct; but it is poor consolation to
the one unjustly condemned, to be told that he may shorten his sentence
somewhat by good behavior. Dr. Booker T. Washington, whose language is
quoted above, has, by his eminent services in the cause of education, won
deserved renown. If he has seemed, at times, to those jealous of the best
things for their race, to decry the higher education, it can easily be
borne in mind that his career is bound up in the success of an industrial
school; hence any undue stress which he may put upon that branch of
education may safely be ascribed to the natural zeal of the promoter,
without detracting in any degree from the essential value of his
teachings in favor of manual training, thrift and character-building. But
Mr. Washington's prominence as an educational leader, among a race whose
prominent leaders are so few, has at times forced him, perhaps
reluctantly, to express himself in regard to the political condition of
his people, and here his utterances have not always been so wise nor so
happy. He has declared himself in favor of a restricted suffrage, which at
present means, for his own people, nothing less than complete loss of