966

Rockefellers, Astors and Goulds shall contribute no more to the sup-
port of the National Government than that of the poorest wage earner,
I say that it sets honest men to thinking, and many of them think
that it is high time to reorganize the Supreme Court. There never
was a more just law than the graduated income tax law, passed by
a Democratic Congress, and designed to lift the burden of taxation
from the shoulders of the poorer classes and to place it where it
properly belongs; but that law did not suit Wall Street nor the pro-
tected manufacturers, and before a dollar of that tax could be col-
lected their friends in the Supreme Court had annulled the law.

It has often been written that the great want of the age is men;
surely of Negroes this is true. When I say men, I mean men of
individuality, of thought and action; men who will not be content
to take up the refrain of a protective tariff association nor any other
kind of association, unless it be a Negro protective association; men
who are honest to the heart's core; men who will stand for the right,
though the heavens tottered above and the earth reeled beneath; men
who can have courage without whistling for it, and joy without shout-
ing to bring it; men in whom the current of everlasting life runs still
and deep and strong; men whose consciences are as steady as the needle
to the pole; men too large for certain limits and too strong for sectarian
bands; men who know their message and dare to tell it, and who
know their duty and dare to do it; men who know their places and
fill them. When in our pulpits and workshops, in the counting houses
and professions, and in every place of trust and responsibility, we can
have such men as these, then, and not until then, will the Negro cease
to be the pawn on the chessboard of American polities, and ceased to
be used as a cat's paw for pulling the chestnuts of political pap from
the fires of victories that are sometimes dearly won.

To my white friends I would say, if they are true to themselves,
it will naturally follow that they cannot then be false to their
colored fellow citizens. The march of progress and civilization, the
demands of justice and humanity should imbue the mind of all citizens
of this republic with the fact that those cardinal principles of the
Declaration of Independence, which guarantee to every citizen certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, were never intended by the framers of that instrument as
mere idle words, but they were placed there as living principles upon
which this government of the people, for the people, and by the people
must eventually stand or fall. Our colored citizens have reached that
point on the scale of civilization wherein they need no special legis-
lation; the same laws which protect the white citizens in the enjoy-
ment of their rights are strong enough, when honestly enforced, to
protect all citizens alike.

The Democratic Party has for a number of years favored a material
reduction of the duties upon necessities, and the sentiment in the
party has grown so rapidly of late, that the party and its nominees
stand on a platform, in the present campaign, pledged to a reduction
that shall be immediate and downward. It is our duty as citizens who
will profit to a greater extent than any other class, should this reform
take place, to do all within our power to assist in its accomplishment,
and this cannot be done except through the election of a Democratic
President and Vice-President, and a Democratic Congress; it is there-
fore our duty to vote the Democratie ticket this year, if for no other
reason than to lessen the burden of taxation which Republican admin-
istrations have placed upon us.