THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 302, 18 June 1912, Page 5

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

T "PERPETUAL POLITICIANS." By Gable—Press Association—Copyright. Chicago, June 16. Excitement is at fever heat. Mr. Roosevelt's supporters are haranguing the delegates to the Convention continuously. Altogether, President Taft received 136 contested delegations, and Mr. Roosevelt 10. Mr. Roosevelt declares that it is a Ight of the people against perpetual politicians, thieves and corrupt leaders. A VIGOROUS CAMPAIGN. MR. ROOSEVELT'S THREATS. Received 17, 9.40 p.m. > Chicago, Juno 17. . Mr. Roosevelt's arrival was excellently timed, when popular indignation at the committees 1 modus operandi was at its height. The committees allotted President Taft 234 contested seats, and Mr. Roosevelt 20. Mr. Roosevelt, addressing the crowd, •aid that it was a naked fight against theft, but the thieves were not going to win. The people would refuse to countenance the theft of their votes by professional politicians, representing what was most corrupt in the country's political life. He demanded that the Credentials Committee should reject the findings of the National Committee. Failing this, . he would appeal to the Convention.

RIVAL CLAIMS. THE NEGRO VOTE. Received 17, 11.50 p.m. Chicago, June 17. President Taft's managers claim 555 . votes in the Convention, which would elect him on the first ballot. Mr. Roosevelt's supporters concede only 535, which fe insufficient. They state that La Follette cannot be nominated, and his delegation must go to Roosevelt. If Roosevelt fails to dominate the Convention his followers will found a new party. ..Every doubtful delegate is being feted by parties, particularly the negroes. Prominent negroes have been brought to Chicago in order to induce the negro delegates to support Roosevelt.

THE NEGRO IN POLITICS. A CURIOUS SITUATION. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, 'or by any State,' on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Thus reads the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, inserted after the close of the Civil War. Despite this clear statement, the political rights of the negroes have been reduced to a nullity by all manner of disfranchisement measures violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. The current and fairly successful way of disfranchising negroes in the Southern States is to make a general law excluding illiterates from the ballot, white or black, but putting the white ▼oters back by a provision which admits those whose ancestors fought in the Civil War. These provisions are supplemented by the requirement of a receipt for a poll tax paid long before, and a system of registration so administered that it can shut out or admit a. claimant at the will of the registrar. But, despite this political apostasy, the negro constitutes a political factor which cannot be ignored without local and national peril. He constitutes oneTvinth of the numerical strength of the American people, and is promiscuously scattered over the whole geographical area of the United States, ranging in relative density from ten to one in the black belts of the South to less than one per cent, in the higher latitudes. He furnishes one-sixth of the wage-earning class, and is inextricably interwoven in the national, industrial, and economic fabric. He speaks the same language, conducts the same modes of activity, reads the same literature, worships God after the same ritual as his white fellowcitizens.