Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
"Many of them have adopted in their constitutions," Dr. Abbott
continues, "a qualified suffrage. The qualifications are not the
same in all the States, but there is not one of those States in
which every man, black or white, has not a legal right to vote,
provided he can read and write the English language, owns three
hundred dollars' worth of property, and has paid his taxes. A
provision that no man should vote unless he has intelligence enough
to read and write, thrift enough to have laid up three hundred
dollars' worth of property, and patriotism enough to have paid his
taxes, would not be a bad provision for any State in the Union to
incorporate in its constitution."[38]
Such a provision accompanied by the customary Southern poll tax, which,
Dr. Abbott overlooked (evidently inadvertently), would add several
million more white workingmen to the millions (colored and white) that
are already without a vote.[39]
We cannot wonder, then, that the working people, who are enthusiastic
supporters of every democratic reform, should nevertheless distrust the
democracy of the new movement. It is generally supposed in the United
States that the reason the new "Insurgency" is weaker in the East than
in the West is because of the greater ignorance and political corruption
of the masses of the great cities of the East. But when we see the
radicalism of the West also, as soon as it enters the towns, tending to
support the Socialists and Labor parties rather than the reformers, we
realize that the distrust has no such local cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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