AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM 573 316). But the canvassing board "threw out returns on vague rumor and unsupported assertion," and "ignored technical irregularities in returns that favored Republicans, but used the same defects as a ground for rejecting returns that favored the Democrats." Such methods manufactured a Republican majority of 3500. How should it be decided which sets were valid? The Constitution was unhappily vague. Congress could not easily agree upon a law, because the lower House was The "eight Democratic and the Senate Republican. Injudi- to seven cious leadership might easily have plunged the decision Nation again into civil war, which this time would not have been sectional. Finally (January, 1877), Congress created the famous Electoral Commission of fifteen, to pass upon the disputes, five members chosen by the House, five by the Senate, and five justices of the Supreme Court, of which last five three were Republicans. After many painful weeks, by a strict party vote, the Commission decided every disputed point in favor of the Republicans. The end was reached only two days before the date for the inauguration of the new President. The "eight to seven" decisions became a by-word in politics, and they are generally regarded as proof that even members of the Supreme Court were controlled by partisan bias. But this discreditable result was more than offset by the notable spectacle of half a nation submitting quietly, even in time of intense party feeling, to a decision that had the form of law. Rarely, in any country, has free government been subjected to such a strain or withstood one so triumphantly. After all, the South reaped the fruits of victory. President Hayes at once removed the Federal garrisons. Then the State governments to which his election had been due immediately vanished, and the South was left to work out its salvation for itself as best it could. Slavery and the blunders of Reconstruction have left America burdened with a frightful race problem. Southern The South and the Negro Whites have continued to agree in the necessity for keeping the Negro from the polls, at least wherever his vote might be a real factor, and that race remains practically destitute of political privilege. To keep it so, there has been created and preserved for a third of a century "the Solid South," in close alliance with the Democratic party, without the possibility of natural and wholesome division upon other issues. In 1890 the Republicans in Congress attempted to restore Federal supervision of congressional and presidential elections. The "Lodge Force Bill" failed, partly from the opposition of northern capital invested now in Southern manufactures. But the South took warning, and began to protect its policy by the forms of constitutional right. The States adopted property qualifications and educational tests for the franchise. Mississippi led off (1890) by prescribing payment of a poll tax and the ability to read or understand the Constitution. Only 37,000 of the 147,000 adult Negro males could read; few of these paid the tax; and White officials decide whether a would-be voter understands the Constitution. Such qualifications, in practice, too, are invoked only against the Negro, not against the illiterate White. Sometimes the latter is protected further by the notorious 'Grandfather clause," expressly declaring that the restrictions shall not exclude any one who could vote prior to January 1, 1861, or who is the son or grandson of such voter. In 1916, an extreme provision of this sort in Oklahoma was declared unconstitutional by the Federal Courts. 66 On the side of civil equality, as we have noted, the Fourteenth Amendment is even more a dead letter. Just at the close of Reconstruction (in 1875), Congress made a final attempt to secure for Negroes the same accommodations as for Whites in hotels, railways, and theaters. In 1883, however, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional when in conflict with State authority (page 564). Accordingly, the two races in the South live without social mingling. The special cry of the South is "race integrity." Inter AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM 575 marriage, it is insisted, shall not be permitted: therefore there must be no social intercourse on terms of equality. Many leaders of the Negro race, too, like the late Booker Washington of Tuskegee and his successor, Charles Moten, desire social segregation for the present, but with a difference. To the White, Negro segregation means Negro inferiority. To these Negro leaders, separate cars and separate schools for their people mean a better chance for the Negro to "find himself"; but they insist that the "Jim Crow car" shall be cared for and equipped as well as the car for Whites who pay the same rates, and that Negro schools shall receive their proportion of State funds and attention. As yet, this goal remains far distant.1 1 Southern States authorize cities to shut out Negro homes from residential districts which they choose to reserve for Whites. The Supreme Court has declared these laws void (November, 1917) — but on the ground that the (White) owner must not be deprived by the State of his right to sell his property in such districts in any way he thinks most profitable. It does not appear that the decision seriously threatens "Jim-Crowism." PART XI A BUSINESS AGE: 1876-1917 THE forty years between Reconstruction and the World War belong to "contemporary history." Leading actors are still living; and causes and motives in many cases are not yet surely known. The two great phases are an enormous economic and industrial growth, and the rising struggle between the people on the one side, and great wealth, fortified by special privilege, on the other. Wealth is supported by vast numbers of a middle class who feel dependent upon it. The labor unions, small as their enrollment is in comparison with the total number of workers, hold the first trench on the other side, because of their admirable organization. Both sides, on the whole, are honest; but each believes the other dishonest and un TABLE OF ADMINISTRATIONS 577 patriotic. Neither can get the other's viewpoint; and each has been guilty of blunders and of sins. Privilege believes that the welfare of the country rests on business prosperity, and that the government ought to be an adjunct of business. Labor regards this attitude as due merely to personal greed, and, on its side, wishes government to concern itself directly with promoting the welfare of men and women. Privilege, by words, proclaims devotion to "American" individualism (a safe principle for the strong few in contests with a more numerous but divided and weak foe), while, by its secret control of the press and the government, it threatens the life of democracy. Labor, to save that American principle of democracy, turns from early individualism toward collective and coöperative action. Each party, quite honestly, denounces the other as unAmerican. The student of history may hope that this class war is only a necessary stage in progress toward a broader social unity. The following table of Administrations may be convenient for reference in considering this period. |