I have already pointed out
how sorely in need of such economic and spiritual guidance
the emancipated Negro was, and I am quite willing to admit
that if the representatives of the best white Southern public
opinion were the ruling and guiding powers in the South
to-day the conditions indicated would be fairly well fulfilled.
But the point I have insisted upon and now emphasize again,
is that the best opinion of the South to-day is not the ruling
opinion. That to leave the Negro helpless and without a ballot
to-day is to leave him not to the guidance of the best, but
rather to the exploitation and debauchment of the worst; that
this is no truer of the South than of the North,--of the North
than of Europe: in any land, in any country under modern
free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised
people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy
of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a
temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and
seldom will withstand.
Moreover, the political status of the Negro in the South is
closely connected with the question of Negro crime.
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