Agitations on the surface are significant mainly as they are connected with the larger movements of the deeper waters beneath. The re-election of Speaker Reed to Congress, and the contest for the re-election of Mr. Breckinridge in Arkansas; the Federal Election Bill, which proposes to secure a free ballot for all men irrespective of color, and the Convention in Mississippi, which aimed avowedly to curtail the voting of the colored people--all these derive their importance from their relation to the gravest problem of American statesmanship. That problem will not be settled by the results of either of these current questions. For at the bottom the real question is: Shall knowledge and character and property become the possession of the colored race, and they thus be prepared for their place in American politics, industry and prosperity, or will they be allowed for the lack of these things to be crushed back into a condition of semi-slavery or be goaded to resistance or discouraged in poverty, pauperism and degradation? That is a fundamental question. For that, men should read, think, pray and work. The Federal Election Bill And The Mississippi Convention. --------------------------------------------------------- The ultimate aim of the Federal Election Bill in Congress, and of the Constitutional Convention in Mississippi, point in diametrically opposite directions. They cannot be harmonized, and there is no middle way between them. The Election Bill contemplates a "free ballot and fair count" for every voter, including the Negro. The Mississippi Convention aims to restrict Negro suffrage. In an address delivered by the President of the Convention, September 11th, he is reported to have said that: "He did not propose to mince matters and hide behind a subterfuge, but if asked by anybody if it was the purpose of the Convention to restrict Negro suffrage, he would frankly say, 'Yes; that is what we are here for.'" This Convention proposes to secure its object not by the force and fraud of earlier days, but by constitutional and legal methods--or at least by what has constitutional and legal _forms_. All this, however, is another attempt to achieve the impracticable. As the Negro grows in intelligence and numbers, he will claim his right to vote.