"It is the physical presence of the Negro which constitutes the Negro problem and the race issue. It is not the fact that the Negro can vote in the South, because, as a matter of fact, he cannot and does not. The Negro problem would be just as troublesome as it is to-day if the fifteenth amendment were repealed. The fifteenth amendment touches it only on its political or voting side, where the trouble is cured already in the South. It is true that the Negro does vote in Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey and various other places. But the people of those states could to-morrow, if they wanted to, get rid of his vote, just as we have got rid of it in Mississippi. The very fact that they have not done it is proof of the fact that they do not want to do it, and that very fact is the death-blow of the Vardaman agitation." Negroes are disfranchised by legal and illegal methods and by unfair administration of the law. The "white" primary is a wide-spread subterfuge: to the democratic primary election all white men are admitted without question, and no Negro under any circumstances. The verdict of the primary is then registered in a farce "election." In Atlanta, _e.g._, at the "election" 700 votes are cast in a city of 100,000! The success of the "white" primary depends of course (_a_) on the illegal power of the party chiefs to exclude any votes they choose on any pretext and (_b_) on the absolute and unfair control of election machinery and returns by one party and (_c_) on public acquiescence in this travesty on popular government. NOTE 15 The Atlanta riot had two distinct phases: first, Saturday, the killing of innocent and surprised Negroes by a white mob; then a lull when blacks rapidly armed themselves; finally the attempt to renew the assault by a crowd mingled with county policemen, who were repulsed by a fierce defense by Negroes; these Negroes were afterward acquitted of murder by a southern jury. The number of white and black killed in that encounter will never be known, but it stopped the riot. Cf. "World To-Day," Nov. 1906. NOTE 16 The executive officials of the miners in Alabama consist of four whites and four Negroes. NOTE 17 Ten good references on the economic history of the Negro and slavery are: 1. Kemble, Fanny, "A Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation," N.Y., 1863. 337 pp. 12mo. 2. Olmsted, F.L., "A Journey in the Sea Board Slave States," N.Y., 1856. 723 pp. 12mo. 3. Cairnes, J.E., "The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs," London, 1862. 304 pp., 2d ed. N.Y. 410 pp. 4. United States 12th Census, Bulletin No. 8: "Negroes in United States," by W.F. Wilcox and W.E.B. DuBois, Wash., 1904, 333 pp. 5. "The Philadelphia Negro" (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania) 520 pp. Ginn. 6. "The Suppression of the Slave Trade" (Harvard Historical Monographs, No. 1) 335 pp. Longmans, 1896. 7. Atlanta University Publications: No. 3, "Efforts for Social Betterment," 66 pp. 1898.