The New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, in its editorial accompanying the publication of this letter, said: "We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new constitution." The same editorial further states that impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man not only "with the utmost safety," but "it would have a beneficial effect upon the politics of the State." In fact, the press of both North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, published this letter with practically unanimous editorial endorsement, but in spite of all this the leaders of the convention remained obdurate, the immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than Booker Washington that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention leaders were forced into the position of driving through the discriminatory amendment not only in the face of the condemnation of the better element throughout the country but even with the disapproval of the better and leading citizens of their own State. Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a constitutional amendment. This time Mr. Washington went personally to Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to this bill. In an interview published in the Atlanta _Constitution_ at the time he said: