| Show I I NOT QUITE YET I Assemblymen en Dees of Mississippi l has introduced inviting the thc legislatures of the northern states slates to appoint committees to lo visit the south and fairly aidy study the great problem of the races ing ourselves and aud the time people of or our great s state to aid ard d all such buch investigations ear earnestly an and ally M J i- i Assuming that thaC Mr 11 Dees is sincere we cannot very we well l see seo his hiE object is It i is understood th that t lie ne wants the tho amendment of the e constitution which ga gave e the b ballot billot to the time negro repealed rep But nut wh why he is iN anxious about that 1 It has hag been practically call cally all repealed in Mississippi i for thirty years Th rh The ballot t. t was given the colored race that the they might protect themselves in the south and amI it was prompted chiefly because Mississippi and South Carolina ha had passed peonage laws which practically j- j returned the time freed colored man to a worse slavery than had been liis Ills before the war val It was naturally believed el ev tl that with the ballot iu in his hands hand the negro could protect protect pro pro- himself r We e all ull know what followed And i it seems that Mississippi is not in the least changed by the years Only a few weeks ago the Italian J minister reported to lo the state department at Washington Wash Tash ington that authentic news had come to him that some of his countrymen were being held in ill peonage in Mississippi l The state department department- sent an agent there to investigate Whereupon Thereupon when his mission was as known he was arrested on some petty charge tried convicted and fined 50 lIe He was not permitted permitted permitted per per- to wire ire to Washington the determination being to make Inake him serve sen-e out fifty days in the thc chain gang When he Ime declared that he was acting under special orders from the thc department of or state the reply was that if Theodore Roosevelt were to come there thier on omi a like mission they would put him hint in the chain gang for Mississippi had a habit of passing and and executing her own laws without reference to lo lothe the federal government Under such conditions we wo do not believe that a visit isit to the south b by northern legislative delegations would be of much avail The Washington government government govern govern- ment was as forced to explain to the time Italian minister that lint it could not enforce its own laws against the public opinion of a state slate and now both bolh Italy and Austro Hungary have put up warnings to emigrants to America not to tl try to settle in the southern states It is a rule thai lint when a plaintiff goes into court demanding justice he lie must go in with Cl clean Ul hands It tt was a to enfranchise the whole colored race but we do not believe that the tho north will vote vole to repeal that amendment so long as us southern states have lave laws on their statute books that make possible he time practical enslavement of a man for a petty lettY debt |
