We had better look at the situation of the Negro in the United States to-day without blinking the facts, see it clear and see it straight. The present outlook for that race is gloomy and depressing, and this gloom and depression are nation-wide. Until the Negro gets in the South some measurable freedom in the use of the ballot, the present agencies at work for his advancement, like industrial and the higher education and the acquisition of property, and organized agitation in the North for his rights can do little to rescue him from the deep pit into which American race prejudice has pushed and penned him. The colored American child has a poorer chance to rise in the scale of being to-day than had the colored American child of a generation ago. He has a poorer chance in the South in spite of his increased educational opportunities and accomplishments, and he has a poorer chance in the North. For as the condition of the race grows worse and its citizenship deteriorates politically and civilly in the South, it will communicate to that part of it resident in the North something of its own sad lot, legal and industrial limitations and contracting prospects and opportunities. This is the inevitable fate of a ballotless race or class in an industrial democracy like ours. Such is the fate which awaits the American Negro unless he can manage to get the right to vote in the South. And this fate he can not escape so long as he remains a ballotless man--with no weapon of defense against the white man's race prejudice, which is regnant in his home and church and government and press and mills and shops and trades and schools. It is as impossible for the Negro to escape from his blind alley without the ballot as it is for some foolish fly, imprisoned on a window pane, to find its way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights of the Negro as laborer and citizen. But until they are made to respond to his claim for social justice and civil rights he will continue in the future as he is to-day the helpless victim of the peonage and convict lease systems, of the plantation lease and credit systems, of contract labor and "Jim Crow" laws, of lynching and the inequitable distribution of the public school funds between the races. I can not repeat too often that such monstrous depression of a part of Southern labor is not less bad for the whites than it is for the blacks. Nothing else can possibly come of it in the future than has come of it in the past but evil to the South, arrested development and a backward civilization. For the whites cannot