Twelve years ago Mark Hanna, the Big Boss of the Republican Party, made a statement which you would do well to consider. After he had made McKinley president, he noticed something that you may not have noticed yourself. He saw that there was no essential difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party. He knew that the same big Wall Street companies supplied the campaign funds for each of them. He knew that the same money power was buying out the men whom you elected, whether you elected Republicans or Democrats. He saw that very soon you and I and the rest of us, black as well as white, would come to see it too. And he opened his mouth and spake these words: "The next great political battle in this country will be fought, not between the Republican and the Democratic parties, but between the Republican party and Socialism." I will tell you later what that implies. But just now, what I should like you to see is this: that Senator Hanna realized that Socialism was a serious issue. He couldn't afford to pooh-pooh it. Neither can any sensible person. The Socialist party is the third in point of numbers. It is important. What do you know of this party? Have you ever read its platform? Read it once, just for the sake of fair play—just to show that you are not afraid to give it a hearing—and you will realize why Mark Hanna paid it such a tribute of respect. Don't be a baby any longer and listen to the stale lies which other people tell you about Socialism. Read the Socialist platform and you will understand why some politicians have to tell lies about it just the same as they have to tell lies about you. They lie about it because they don't want you to know what it really is, just as they lie about you because they don't want people to know what you really are. Every year they feed you with the same soft mush around election time to help them to ride into power on your votes; then after election they give you Brownsville and lynching bees. Do you wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the great abolitionist, when he gave up his job as collector of the Port of New York, said that he was sick of the way in which the Republican party was selling you out? The Republican party is always engaged in selling you out—or in selling out the working people of this country. Do you doubt it? Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican Congress has never said a word or done anything about the disfranchisement of nearly three million Negro voters in the South? Read the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution and you will see that the Republican party has always had the power to stop it. But just now I want to get you interested in the one party that strikes at the very root of your trouble and that of every workingman in the country—white and black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro. And for that reason