PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 June 1912, Page 6

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

ROOSEVELT ON THE STUMP,

GETTING READY FOR EVENTUALITIES. >

VETERAN DEMOCRAT SARCASTIC

[per PRESS ASSOClATlON.—copyright.]

CHICAGO, June 18,

Mr Roosevelt at a reception at his hotel shook hands with crowds od‘ admirers until lie was forced to retire exhausted. He addressed, a vast audience in the evening and declared : “We are standing for elementary decency. This is not a political, but a great moral issue.” He added that President Taft had surrendered himself wholly to the bidding of the professional bosses, and was countenancing sharp trickery which was just within the law.

He said that he defeated President Taft by two to one in the primaries, and had the people behind him. “Our democracy,” he continued, “is put to a vital test. The. conflict is between human right and special privilege.” He concluded : “With unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes, we stand nt Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.” •Mr Roosevelt proposes that the uncontested delegate* should decide the matter of the contested delegates. As Mr Roosevelt’s uncontented votes greatly outnumber President Taft’s, . the proposal is likely to precipitate a crisis. At the first roll-call to-day uproar is feared, and 1,200 assistant, sergeants-at-arms have been enrolled, while a .large force of police is kept within the chairman’? ►■all.

Mr William Jennings .Bryan states that the size .of the negro honorarium is apparently a determining factor in the struggle.

THE NEGRO IN POLITICS. . “The right of citizens of the United States fo vote shall, not be denied hr. abridged by the United Slates, ‘or by any State,’ on account of race, colour,, or previous condition of servitude.’’

'lllus reads the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States, Constitution," inserted after the close of the Civil, War, Despite i this clear statement, the. political rights of the negroes have been reduced to a I nullity ,by all manner ,of disfranchisement measures violating the spirit,, if not the letter, of . the Constitution. The . current and fairly successful way of disfranchising negroes .in the Southern States is to make a general law. excluding illiterates fromdhe ballot, white or black, but putting the white voters back by a provision which admits those whose ancestors fought in the Civil War. These provisions re supplemented by the requirement of a receipt for a poll tax paid long before, and a system of registration so administered that it can shut out or admit a claimant at the will of the registrar. But, despite this political apostasy, the negro constitutes a political factor which cannot be ignored without local or national peril. He constitutes one-ninth the numerical strength of the American people, and is promiscuously scattered over the whole' geographical area of the united States, ranging in relative density from ten to one in the black belts of the South to less than one per cent, in the higher latitudes. He furnishes one-sixth of < the wage-earning class, and is inextricably interwoven in the national, industrial, and economic fabric. Hc.spc-i'-r the Fame language, conducts the modes of ; ct.i - ity. reads tin -ame literature, worships God after the rame ritual as his white fellow-citizens.