by the most radical method their mastery must be forever acknowledged(?). Now, to conclude, since a dozen colored voters might hold the balance of power in town or county, the bitter irony of the situation is overwhelming.¹ The South is simply driven by its own irrefutable(?) logic to total disfranchisement of the Negro, there being no safe stopping point short of the practical exclusion of the colored inhabitants of a dozen or more states from any part in the making or administering of the laws, national, state or municipal under which they live(!). All this the South, impelled by her honest desire(!) for good government, and resolutely turning her back upon past methods of fraud and violence,(!) means to accomplish legally—provided Congress and the Supreme Court throw over her naked but unalterable will the broad mantle of legality. ¹ In West Virginia there are, on the Census basis (958,800 = whole population, less 43,499-colored population = 915,301-white population, divided by 3.6 = ratio of white population, generally to white males of voting age.) 254,250 white voters; and (43,499 = colored population, divided by 4.3-ratio of colored population to colored male adults = 10,116 colored voters, of whom 32.3 per cent. are illiterate, = 3267 illiterate colored men,) but 3,267 illiterate colored voters, or about one eightieth of the electorate (257,517 divided by 3,267): yet, even though the national ticket threatened to be hurt by it, it was impossible to stifle the cry for disfranchisement of ignorant black voters as the paramount issue of the West Virginia democratic campaign of 1904. We are reminded of the story of the princess, who wandering in rags, came to a palace and begged accommodation there befitting one of royal blood. The old queen, not sure that she was a princess, determined to test her veracity in this way: She lay a pea upon the floor and piled upon it a dozen feather-beds. If she felt the pea, it was plain that she was a true princess. Morning came none too soon for the unhappy lady, who confessed to the queen having spent a miserable night, something hard in her bed having bruised her till she was black and blue. No longer could the queen doubt that she was a real princess, for who else could have been so delicate. And she was forthwith married to the heir apparent to the throne. So the South acts on the belief that if she be absolutely intolerant of the slightest degree of political power in the hands of colored men, that the North must see in the very violence of her antipathy, the hopelessness of any other solution.