Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/127

Rh subject in the press at the present time, know that I was not. Is the situation any better today than it was years ago, when I ventured my predictions? No, they are infinitely worse. The "problem" is far graver; the number of negroes far greater; and the means of ridding ourselves of these black parasites immeasurably more difficult. At our nation's capital, as they do everywhere else in the country, they still continue to furnish nine-tenths of the petty and major crimes on the court calendars; as an element they are more dangerous than ever in the matter of assaulting the female sex among the whites; their notions of national and municipal politics are just as rotten and debased as they always have been; they are just as much given to every species of mendacity as they were then; and they still pose as a race object-lesson before our growing generation, in all that is most lewd, most degrading, most objectionable, most ignorant and superstitious of the bestial side of the character of the genus Homo. There is no uncharitable intent in me when I judge them as I do as a whole, for the negro, the pure negro in this country, is no more responsible for his organization and character than any other animal is. A vulture will always eat carrion when surrounded on all hands by every kind of cleaner food. It is the nature of the bird.

A number of years ago I was at the voting polls of a state election in the Southern part of Maryland. Negroes went up there in bunches to deposit their votes. Every vote they deposited had been bought for a mere trifle by some of the representatives of the interested political parties of the time. A most disgusting sight it was,— monstrous absolutely, and involving