There was no open applause, but Mrs. Parsons saw something in the melting faces before her that was infinitely more encouraging, and after a moment's pause, and leaning slightly on the table, she went on: “Before I set down, I want to say one word about this big race question, anyway. I'm just a plain woman, but I read papers an' I've thought about it a lot. We hear some white folks say that the education the niggers are now gettin' is the prime cause of so much crime amongst the blacks--they say this in spite of the fact that it is always the uneducated niggers that commit the rascality. No, my friends, it ain't education that's the cause, it is _the lack_ of it. Education ain't just what is learnt in school-books. It is anything that makes folks higher an' better. Before the war niggers was better educated, for they had the education that come from bein' close to the white race an' profitin' by the'r example. After slavery was abolished the poor, simple numskulls, great, overgrown, fun-lovin' children, was turned loose without advice or guidin' hand, an' the worst part of 'em went downhill. Slavery was education, and I'll bet the Lord had a hand in it, for it has lifted a race from the jungles of Africa to a civilized land full of free schools. So I say, teach 'em the difference between right an' wrong, an' then let 'em work out their own salvation. “Who in the name of common-sense is to do this if it ain't you of the superior race? _But!_ wait a minute, think! How can you possibly teach 'em what law an' order is without knowin' a little about it yourselves? How can you learn a nigger what justice means when he sees his brother, son, or father, shot dead in his tracks or hung, like a scare-crow to the limb of a tree because some lower grade black man a hundred miles off has committed a dastardly deed? No sensible white man ever thought of puttin' the two races on equality. The duty of the white blood is always to keep ahead of the black, and it will. This candidate openly declares that the time is coming when the negroes will overpower the whites. A man that has as poor an opinion of his own race as that ought to be kicked out of it. Now I can't vote, but I want every woman in this crowd that believes I know what I'm talkin' about to see that her brother, father, or husband votes for a member of the legislature that knows what law an' order means, an' not for a red-handed anarchist who would lay this country in ruins to gain his own puny aims. That's all I've got to say.”