Things would undoubtedly be different for the colored people in those states had they though slight, some positive and appreciable influence at the polls. Their condition would not even then be ideal--far from it. But their hard lot as men would improve, their worth as citizens, their social and industrial value to their community, state and country would rise correspondingly in the scale of being and character, with the increased freedom, self-respect and security which in consequence would come to them as a race. Legislatures and administrative officers would begin to make some response to their claim for social justice and political rights, and the courts would begin also to lend a more attentive ear to their rights of person and property. The end of all those terrible systems which exploit and rob and oppress them and keep them poor and ignorant and weak, the sad victims of race prejudice and greed and cruelty, would grow nearer to the perfect day of the race's final deliverance as American citizens. They would begin to get for their children more and better schools and longer school terms, and for their teachers more equal pay as compared with that received by white teachers for similar service. Such is the deplorable situation of the Negro in the South at the close of the first fifty years of his freedom. There will be no improvement in that situation to any material extent until he gets the ballot, a voice in the government of those states. He can not obtain a voice in those governments of and by himself. He must get help from some power outside of himself. But from whom and in what direction ought he to look for it? Not certainly from the North, from the Republican Party. For they gave up long ago trying to solve the problem how to make a vote in that section count as much as a vote in the solid South. They will not again enact a Force Bill or attempt to do so or anything like it. They have during recent years made no movement to execute that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides for a reduction of Southern representation in the lower Branch of Congress proportioned to the number of the disfranchised male population of those states, and they have in fact no disposition to do so. On the contrary non-interference is the ominous word which now gags the Northern people and press, its pulpit and platform and hobbles the action of the general government. Indeed, the outgoing occupant of the White House has carried the policy of non-interference to extreme limits. For he it is who laid down the rule at the beginning of his administration, and has observed it strictly for four years, that it would be unwise to make appointments of colored men to federal office in the South whenever the South objects to such appointments. In consequence of the consistent enforcement of this rule colored federal office-holders in the South are like angels' visits to that section, few and far between. The South, as