the white West are doing to allay the fears of the white South. The negro's standard of living is steadily on the up-grade. His economic efficiency is tightening. His race pride is increasing. His intellectual activity is expanding and strengthening. In brief, what Doctor Odum would call his "social adequacy" is steadily rising. All this means that he is becoming less and less a menace to civilization as he proceeds farther and farther from the status of a slave. But the Japanese a thousand years ago reached a cultural plane probably superior to that of the modern negro, which does not materially abate the Californian objection to the threat of Japanese domination. The South cannot handle this problem alone, even with the assistance which the negro admittedly is giving.

It is useless, however, to expect any section to take a lively and intelligent interest in any problem which is not peculiarly its own. All of us have too many troubles now to go out seeking others. Unless my reasoning is wholly at fault, however, there is nothing distinctively Southern about this problem, in its larger aspects. The South is one-fourth of the whole country, and no problem that vitally affects an entire quarter of the nation can be of no significance to the rest. Indeed, these figures refer only to the twelve Southern States that supported Davis; but the condition is only less acute in such great border States as Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. If they are added to the South, the proportion comes closer to one-third than to one-fourth.

But adhering strictly to the original area of the twelve Davis States, we are confronted with the fact that here are 26,000,000 people living nominally under a democracy, but contributing little or nothing to the decisions which that democracy is constantly being called upon to make. The whole theory of democracy rests upon the assumption that the collective wisdom, courage, and integrity of the people are greater than their collective folly, cowardice, and dishonesty. If that theory is sound, the loss of the effective participation of the South in the nation's councils is a net loss. If that theory is sound, deadening the interest of onefourth of your democracy in res publica

is a process bound to result in injury to the republic.

But let us abandon theory and turn to an examination of the practical effect upon American politics of fettering the South to the Democratic party. In the first place, it assures to that party a degree of immunity which is, to say the least, of questionable value from the standpoint of the country. As long as the South remains solid, the Democratic party as a political entity cannot be killed. No length to which it might proceed in stupidity or villainy would suffice to destroy an organization that, despite its blunders and its crimes, still retained command of more than half enough votes to elect a President of the United States. On more than one occasion, as a matter of historic fact, the Democratic party has repudiated every single principle it had professed to hold sacred four years earlier, and yet has survived. William J. Bryan and Alton B. Parker were no more of the same political school than were Nicholas Romanoff and Nicholas Lenine, and the fact that both were run by the same party in successive campaigns proves only that a party with 136 electoral votes safely in its possession has no indispensable need of an unalterable set of principles.

This block of Southern electoral votes is a potential menace to the rest of the country and to the South itself in that it may be at any time the decisive factor whereby the nation may have forced upon it a President whose principles are abhorrent to a heavy majority of the American people. Merely to illustrate the point, let us assume that the preponderance of opinion in this country is in favor of the eighteenth amendment. It certainly is in the South, and apparently it is in the West. Yet in 1924 the supporters of Smith believed that if they could capture the nomination it would be entirely feasible, by combining the vote of the wet East and that of the dry, but handcuffed, South to elect a wet President in a dry country. Suppose the West were swept by some mania as fantastic as Ku Kluxism-bolshevism, for example, or polyandry. It would be necessary only to capture the convention and nominate a Western candidate, for the raving West

and the reluctant, but helpless, South to force upon the country a President who said his prayers to the shade of Lenine, or who held up the celebrated Mrs. Dennistoun as the very model of feminine propriety. Indeed, an analogous procedure has been prevented on several occasions only by the much-be-damned two-thirds rule in the Democratic National Convention. As long as the South remains solid under any and all circumstances, that rule is one of the bulwarks of the liberties of the people.

Less direct and obvious, but certainly as mischievous in the long run, is the encouragement that such a condition offers to parochialism in politics. It is more than encouragement; parochialism is made inevitable and inescapable, the very sine qua non of Southern statecraft. The only channel left unblocked in which Southern political preferences, prejudices, and enthusiasms may run is the channel of local politics. The South Carolinian is permitted to become excited only over contests for Democratic nominations within the State. Naturally, he becomes doubly excited over them, and as naturally tends to refer every phase of politics to the particular phase in which he finds real interest and excitement. By excessive concentration on intrastate affairs he becomes progressively less capable of adopting a national view-point on anything. The strong tendency present in all of us to regard whatever seems good for our own localities as good for the whole country is intensified when there is no counterbalance in a vivid and effective interest in national affairs. Thus it becomes easy for Southern Democrats in the Senate to vote for high protective tariffs on sugar and lumber without having their Democracy questioned by their constituents. So the service that the South pays to the causes for which the national Democracy fights becomes largely lip-service, as President Wilson found to his cost. The administration champion during the League of Nations fight was not one of the veteran senators from the Democratic stronghold, but Hitchcock, from the wavering State of Nebraska. Indeed, when that fight waxed furious, a number of Southern senators turned tail and bolted from the field, while the State

of Georgia elected Thomas E. Watson to the Senate on a platform of avowed hostility to Woodrow Wilson and all his works. The South will vote for the Democratic nominee, but there is no assurance whatever that the South will support his programme after his election in the only effective way; that is, by punishing Southern members of Congress who sink their knives into that programme.

It would be interesting and perhaps profitable to inquire to what extent this narrowing of the range of political thinking has narrowed the whole range of the South's intellectual activity, to what extent the ordination of a Sacred Cow in the shape of the Democratic party is responsible for the existence of other Sacred Cows in the realms of morals, religion, education, and manners. But that inquiry is not within the scope of this article. What is within its scope is some suggestion of the vast, pernicious influence upon the political morality of the rest of the country that must be exerted by the presence within the country of 26,000,000 people who are frankly bearing in mind some other consideration than the highest interest of the nation when they go to the polls on presidential election day. This influence cannot be measured exactly, but it cannot fail to be immense. Its power is hinted in the fact that practical politicians in the Republican forces admit, in their franker moments, that the Solid South is an asset of immense value to them in many parts of the North and West, where it is constantly used as a bugaboo to scare wabbling Republicans into line, thereby causing them to vote against their convictions, and so encouraging the spread of political insincerity.

I do not pretend to assert that if the negro question were settled to-morrow the South would promptly go Republican. I doubt that it would do anything of the sort, for the doctrine of Thomas Jefferson still has a vast number of thoughtful and intelligent adherents below the Potomac. But I do assert that the Democratic vote of the South under present conditions is not a vital, wholesome expression of confidence in the principles and policies of the Democratic party. I do assert that if the South were politically free, out of more than sixteen hundred thousand

South Carolinians there would be more than 1,123 who would vote the Republican ticket. The vote that was cast for Mr. Davis in the electoral college was no more vital and wholesome than one of the corpses which, according to the charges already referred to, were voted in the South Carolina primary. It was a dead vote.

Lest I be accused of purely destructive criticism, let me declare, in conclusion, that the answer to the question that the dead vote of the South presents is at hand and may be stated with seductive ease. All that is necessary to remedy the whole situation is to expel the ancient frauds that infest our national politics and face the facts as they exist. Simple, isn't it? We need only make over our history, par

ticularly that of the last seventy years, hang all the demagogues in the land, burn all the lying text-books of history, and cut out the tongues of all the ignorant and prejudiced teachers. Just a trifling reconstruction of human nature will do the business.

But while we await the completion of that operation, it will do no harm for thoughtful men of all sections to give the problem some attention. It does not help, and it will not help, to dismiss the whole business as merely an inexplicable idiosyncrasy of Southerners. Twentysix million people do not have inexplicable idiosyncrasies. When they act together in a certain way, the explanation of their action is always easy to find if any one seeks it.

WO seconds after Cap'n Quiller had stowed away the last mouthful of apple pie he pushed back his chair and arose abruptly.

"Little late to-night, Ma. Mind if I shove off?"

There was abject apology in Cap'n Quiller's voice, sheepishness in his manner, but as the hands of the ship's clock on the mantel pointed to five minutes after seven the Cap'n felt that he could well afford any humility rather than be detained longer by mere food.

From her half-finished pie Mrs. Quiller glanced up at her husband and sighed audibly a theatrical, trumped-up-forthe-occasion sigh. She did her best to assume a long-suffering air. Her eyes travelled rapidly from her husband's eager face to the clock and back to her husband again.

"Drat your old radio," she said. "Fore that dumb thing came into the house you allus took two helps o' apple pie. Now

"But there's somethin' special on tonight, Ma-pet." The Cap'n always called his wife "Ma-pet" when five minutes past seven found him absent from his radio.

"I'd jess like to see one night come along when there wasn't nothin' special

When he had gone Mrs. Quiller promptly dropped her masque of stern austerity and a broad, satisfied smile spread across her countenance. Her wizened-up eyes actually twinkled. For she was gladgladder than she could possibly express by smiles or twinkles-that there was something left in the world that could interest her husband to the extent of drawing him away from his favorite deepdish apple pie.

Up-stairs the Cap'n adjusted his spectacles and viewed with supreme pride all five tubes of his radio receiving set, a set such as no man in seven counties could match or even aspire to match. The set had been professionally conceived, professionally made, and professionally installed. The Quillers had a son in the profession, so to speak; at least, Hank Quiller was rated as chief radio operator on board the S. S. Omega plying between New York and the West Indies. On his last trip home Hank had presented his father with the receiving set, hooked the thing up casually, given a few words of instruction, and departed.

Having already missed out on seven minutes of the evening programme Cap'n Quiller lost few moments in gazing idly at his proud possession. Industriously he went about the intricate business of lighting up the tubes, plugging in the earphones, whirling the tickler into place and moving the detector dial to the exact spot where he knew Station WCOR would be on the air. The Cap'n lighted his pipe and concentrated on the voice coming over the radio.

"Live-stock market: Steers, fair to prime, 100 pounds... $9.50 and $10.40; Live Lambs, fair to prime, 100 pounds ... $14.00 and $14.75; Hogs . . ."

Over these figures the Cap'n nodded appreciatively. Wonderful mechanism the radio-sit right at home and know what's going on in all parts of the world.

The radio voice began to talk about the grain market. The Cap'n took two puffs from his pipe and turned the dials to WRAN. Yes, the Bedtime Story was going full blast.

"Who are you, may I ask?' said the little boy. 'I'm a nephew of the sandman,' said the other little boy, 'and I have to go to bed every night at eight o'clock just the same as you.""

The Cap'n grunted satisfaction. "Workin' swell," he mumbled.

Once more the dials moved to windward as RQAP boomed in on the high note of a soprano solo with the faint echo of a jazz orchestra in the background. A touch on the tickler and the jazz orchestra faded out giving full play of the air to the lady soloist.

The Cap'n puffed contentedly. All the local stations were working O. K. Now for distance, a complicated but thrilling diversion. One night the Cap'n had picked up Davenport, Iowa, as plainly as New York. He might get it againand there was still San Francisco to be heard from. He set to it with a boyish gleam of unbridled excitement.

You would never have recognized the Captain Quiller at his radio as the same man who two months earlier had been nothing more than a fireside brooder. Not that the Cap'n had so much to brood about, but what little he did have he enlarged upon and magnified until he worked up a case of despondency that began to approach melancholia nolum dementia, as the village doctor quaintly put it.

The main trouble with the Cap'n was that he considered himself still a young man and had nothing to do. After fortyfive years of excitement on the high seas he found himself settled down in a sleepy little South Jersey fishing village with the years dragging slowly on toward nothing in particular. If the Cap'n had retired voluntarily, things might have been different; for then he could have gathered around him other old salts of Baytown. and lived over and over again his years in command of the finest sailing vessels on the coast, his later years on steam craft. But the Cap'n had not retired voluntarily. Retiring was about the last thing in the world he would have considered.

"Only lazybones retire," he grumbled. "Others go on and on."

At sixty-three the Cap'n looked forward to nearly a score more years of active duty. But when he mistook Jupiter Light for Fire Island, not to mention the time he went cruising down the coast forgetting completely to stop off at Savannah and pick up a cargo bound for Buenos Ayres-well, to put the matter mildly, the Consolidated Shipping Lines decided it was time Captain Quiller went on the inactive list.

The Cap'n retired to his fireside and his brooding while Miranda Quiller faced the impossible task of evolving distractions that might prod him into the least semblance of enthusiasm for carrying on with life as he found it.

Summers were not so bad, for then the Cap'n could potter around the yard messing with the few rows of vegetables and nursing the flowers, or he could go down the bay fishing when the weakfish were running, or he could amble down to the store to do errands artfully invented by Mrs. Quiller throughout the day. The winters, however, were terrific ordeals both for the Cap'n and for Mrs. Quiller until-blessed be the day-the broadcasting bug bit deep in the Cap'n's tough hide.

Which explains, perhaps, why Mrs. Quiller smiled to herself after the Cap'n had walked out on her half-finished meal and why she looked forward with no great pleasure to the day when the radio would cease to number among its victims her adored but frequently irascible mate.

That day seemed quite remote just now with the Cap'n having successfully tuned in on a church service one thousand miles from Baytown. The Cap'n was at the head of the stairs calling excitedly.

All

"Miranda! Miranda Quiller! hands on the top deck. I've got St. Louis on the loud speaker. Come quick!"

Mrs. Quiller refused to get excited. "We can hear it all right down here. Rozie Brown is over talkin' and settin' with me."

"Ah, Ma, come on up. Bring Rozie along. I want her to hear a loud speaker as is a loud speaker."

"All right, Uncle Lyman. We're coming this very minute."