Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/96

 even in the South. At the Republican National Convention at Chicago, in 1920, such a swart statesman gave an inspiring exhibition of his powers, and in the presence of a vast multitude. His name was Henry Lincoln Johnson, and he has since gone to that bourn where black is white. When he died Dr. Coolidge sent a long and flirtatious telegram of condolence to his widow. The widow of Jacques Loeb got no such telegram. This Johnson was chairman of the Georgia delegation, and his colleagues were all of the Nordic race. But though they came from the very citadel of the Ku Klux Klan, he herded them in a public and lordly manner, and voted them as if they had been stuffed chemises. As Nordics, no doubt, they viewed him with a bitter loathing, but as politicians yearning for jobs they had to be polite to him, and even fawning. He has his peers and successors in all the American States. In many a proud city, North and South, the Aframericans hold the balance of power, and know it.

Moreover, even those who are actually disfranchised, say in the rural wastes of the South, may remove their disability by the simple device of moving away, as, in fact, hundreds of thou-