It has long appeared to the writer that the prime necessity of the Negroes is to learn to distinguish between Negroes and Negroes; between the law-abiding and self-respecting Negro and the lawbreaker and blackguard; between the honest man and the thief; the decent man and the dive-frequenter; the good citizen and the “tough”—in other words, to create for themselves some standard of virtue and right living for both men and women according to which they shall be classified. Not the least evil of the solidifying of the Negro race during the period of reconstruction was the destruction of all distinctions between virtue and vice, as a qualification for civic promotion. After thirty years the upright, law-abiding, conservative Negro is bound by that manacle to the thief and the evil-liver, and strangely enough he mainly appears unwilling to help break the shackles which hold him down. These laws give him a chance to break away from his burden, if he but has the sense to see it. It will tend to break up the dense solidarity of the Negroes, and will give the best among them—that is, the conservative, the industrious, the thrifty, and the enlightened—an opportunity to rise and range themselves in a class where they will be freed from the burden of the ignorant mass which weighs them down, and may form a better class to which the others may aspire. And this the writer esteems a supreme necessity. It leaves open the avenue by which all who are capable may reënter the former field, not as Negroes who are admitted simply as such, however feeble and dull they may be, but as men who are admitted because they are strong and intelligent. The Negro as a race, considered and acting solidly, may be a burden and a menace; but many Negroes are good men and good citizens. They contribute their part to the public wealth and are on every ground of justice and sound policy entitled to consideration. This upper fraction of the race, relieved from the incubus of the great body which they have been forced to carry as it were on their backs, would inevitably secure political representation in the South precisely as they have secured it in the North. They would before long probably have the intelligence to divide upon all economic questions just as any other race divides, and the whites, released from the necessity of maintaining a solidarity, would likewise be free to divide, in which case there would always be an inducement to secure rather than to repress the Negro vote.