(1) convic tion of crime, (2) lack of property, (3) failure to pay tax receipts, (5) failure to pass an educational test, (6) or fail ure to prove descent from (1) Nearly all the constitutions in terms prohibit persons convicted of certain crimes from ever voting again; for instance in Mississippi, the offences enumerated are "bribery, burglary, theft, arson, obtaining money under false pretense, embezzlement, perjury, or bigamy." (2) Two states Alabama and Mississippi - have a moderate property qualification as one of several alternatives. (3) All the six states except Louisiana require the prepayment of poll taxes for one, two or three years. (4) In two states, South Carolina and Mississippi, the voter must be able to prove at the polls that he has paid taxes, and since Negroes are notoriously careless about keeping such papers, they are much more likely to lose the necessary papers. (5) All the constitutions have an educational clause; but in two states taxes on property worth $300 may be a substitute for reading and writing; and in Mississippi it is provided that the voter must "be able to read any section of the constitution of this state; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof." . . . The whole machinery of [such clauses] is in the hands of the white election officers, who are expected to be easily convinced that a white man understands and with difficulty convinced in the case of a Negro. (6) Five of the six constitutions contain the remarkable "grandfather clause," which in somewhat different phraseology sets forth that the descendant of a person who was a voter prior to January 1, 1867, shall vote, notwithstanding his inability to satisfy the intelligence or property qualifications. This is the most doubtful part of the whole system, for it sets up an exemption from the ordinary qualifications which applies only to members of one race and cannot possibly be acquired by members of the Negro race. ... 197. Civic capacity cannot be created by proclamation1 In the whole of American politics there is no more inflammable subject than that of Negro suffrage. Whatever attitude one may 1 From the American Law Review, Vol. XLV. Charles Wallace Collins, "The Fourteenth Amendment and the Negro Race Question"; pp. 853-856. But take upon the subject, some faction is certain to be incensed or al- Inflammable nature of the question of Negro suffrage. version of a noble In conclusion, we may ask what positive gain has the operation The perof the Fourteenth Amendment been to the Negro race? We can point to nothing. All attempts at Federal intervention have been fruit- idealism. less in permanent results. The operation of the Amendment in its relation to the Negro race has in it all of the irony of history. It is the perversion of a noble idealism that the lowest and most benighted element of the African race should in these enlightened days be the ones to rise up and claim the sacred heritage of Anglo-Saxon liberties which, through the fortune of circumstance, have become embodied in the supreme law of the land in the shape of the Fourteenth Amendment. ment is the natural fruit of prolonged toil and sacrifice, The words "citizen," "life, liberty and property," "due process Self-governof law," and "the equal protection of the laws," were born through a travail in which the African had no share. They breathe the sacred symbols of a race which paid the price for greatness. They are the fruit of unmeasured sacrifice and suffering, of innumerable and lengthened struggles through defeat and failure to final victory. They are the key words of that race which has, among all of the peoples of the earth, shown the highest genius for law and government. They can never be superimposed from without. The great truths which they embody can come into being only through the birth pangs of the inner life. The Fourteenth Amendment declared the Negro to be a citizen of the United States of America. . . . But it is a serious matter to personal presupposing be a citizen of a country like the United States. Its ideals of citizencenturies of ship presuppose centuries of independent personal and racial achievement. . . . In the words of an eminent statesman and patriot: "It throws upon him a great responsibility and expects of him a constant and watchful independence. There is no one to look out for his rights but himself. He is not a ward of the government, but his own guardian. The law is not automatic; he must himself put it into operation, and he must show good cause why the courts should exercise the great powers vested in them. . . .' The enfranchise ment of the Negro was, under the circum stances, a crime against the colored race. The Fourteenth Amendment could not Saxons out of Africans. 22 These remarks were spoken to white men . . . yet they apply also to the Afro-American. They speak to him with redoubled force. They set before him the most exalted ideal of citizenship yet achieved by man and bid him reach it if he can. There is a touch of pathos in all of this. The Negro has been the only innocent party in this turmoil of the times. He at least, by every moral law, has been entitled to have justice meted out to him. On the contrary he has been used as a tool first by one section of the country and then by the other. . . . And finally, to satisfy the political idealism and the partizan plans of those to whom he himself was a stranger, he has been thrown naked, penniless and deserted upon the land to pick his way in the midst of the highest and most complicated civilization known to the earth. ... The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment could not make Anglo-Saxons out of Africans. It was unjust to the Negro to force him to play a rôle for which by the forces of nature he was unfitted. make Anglo- He deserves neither ridicule nor blame for the comedy and the tragedy of the Reconstruction. It is one of the fundamental precepts of political science to-day that only those people in a community can participate in its civic, social and political life who are conscious of a common origin, share a common idealism and look forward to a common destiny. Where the community is composed of two divergent races rendering such a community of life impossible, the weaker and less favored race must inevitably and in the nature of things take the place assigned to it by the stronger and dominant race. The Republican party, which controlled all branches of the government after the War, might have made the Negroes wards of the nation, putting them into a position similar to that occupied by the American Indians. They, especially at that time, needed the pro- The fundamental tecting arm of the Federal government thrown around them. Under mistake in this system of sympathetic tutelage the African might have been our Negro led to develop whatever latent powers that may be inherent in his po.icy., race. To-day he can justly raise the cry that many of the doors of opportunity are closed to him. 198. How many potential voters really vote? 1 The suffrage is, of course, a means and not an end. To extend the privilege of voting to people who make little or no use of it may be of little consequence; the extension of the suffrage to persons who habitually use the ballot will have an appreciable effect upon government. It becomes a matter of grave concern, therefore, to know whether or not persons who are legally entitled to the vote are really using the ballot. Professor Hart believes that in general the interest of individuals in elections is increasing. At the same time the fact that a large number of potential voters habitually stay away from the polls constitutes a serious problem. In the following selection, Professor Hart discusses the proposal to penalize those who neglect to vote: Bad weather keeps many thousands of voters at home; compulsory voting would . . . disqualify thousands of men who are kept away by bad roads, or by the rising of the southern streams, along the beds of which highways are often constructed. The voter who has a cold or who justly fears a cold . . . will be debarred. I doubt whether fear of disfranchisement or fine would greatly diminish any of the bad-weather classes. Another group is made up of those who will not mix in "dirty politics"; who think all parties "packs of scoundrels," and who want to be left to their comfortable private life. . . . That such persons constitute one in a hundred of the voters is hard to believe. If disfranchised for not voting, how many additional votes will be got, and how many dollars for the public treasury? Much larger numbers neglect to vote because they know their party to be in a hopeless minority, and that their votes can make no 1 From the Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VII, No. 2. Albert Bushnell Hart, "The Exercise of the Suffrage"; pp. 324–326. Though interest in probably increasing, the neglect to vote is elections is still a serious evil. Some people stay away from the polls because of bad weather. Others re fuse to mix in "dirty politics." Many persons neglect to vote because they know their party is in a hopeless minority. Sometimes voters are The problem of dealing with the vote seller. Conclusion upon the proposal to penalize potential voters for neglecting to vote. ... possible difference. One would expect to find many thousands of such men in the absolutely sure states. . . . All the southern states have a small proportional vote; the congressional vote of Tennessee is about half that of Iowa, which has about the same population and the same industries. In Vermont, which has never gone anything but Republican since there was a Republican party, the majority takes pride in displaying its own size. The stay-at-homes are about as numerous in close as in sure states, particularly if the opinion gets abroad that one party is reasonably sure to win. . . . One large class of abstainers would probably be reduced by [a compulsory voting] law; it is the men who are public-spirited and who know that they ought to vote, but who are too busy and who think their duty will be performed by some one else. If such men voted without much regard for party when they did go to the polls, they might frequently change elections; in fact, however, their number would probably only swell the total vote on both sides without much altering results. . . Next comes the class, unhappily too large, of those who neither know nor care anything about the election, the candidates or the result, but who do care to sell their votes. The hope of the reformers seems to be that such men will get so deeply in arrears of fines that they will disappear out of politics from sheer inability to pay their way back to the suffrage. This brings us to the last and most important class of absentees, those who deliberately withhold their votes because they think that they can exert more influence on public affairs in that way than by casting them. The great evil of the whole suffrage system is not that votes are few, but that they are unconsidered. If a commission went from house to house to get votes, so that there were no trouble to the voters, nineteen men out of twenty would vote their usual party ticket. Any unusual defection of voters means a deliberate lesson to party managers. A similar lesson might be taught by voting for some third-party candidate, or by voting for a good candidate on the other ticket. As a matter of fact there is not in the United States one voter in fifty who will do either under any circumstances. Neither party feels more confidence in the nominating apparatus of the other side than in its own. American voters rarely pass from |