arms; but we can make a revolution through the ballot-box. We are citizens; we are voters. We have in our hands the sovereign power,and if there is injustice here we are responsible for it. No man can escape that responsibility. You know that in this city thousands of human beings die every year before their time, because they have not air and room enough; because, in this world overflowing with wealth, they are denied the necessaries of life. But the great laboring masses have at last got tired of this sort of thing. We now want something for ourselves, something for our wives and children, and what we want for ourselves we want for everybody else. We want to vote to make work plentiful, wages higher, house-rent cheaper; to make it easier for every man to get a home for himself and family. We want to vote to abolish this great injustice."
The student could not cease to wonder that neither the Republican nor the Democratic party had yet seized the golden opportunity which the abject condition of their civil rights now afforded of attracting to either fold the American citizens of African descent. If not from considerations of patriotism or regard for constitutional law, surely from motives of self-preservation in the coming struggle with King Mob, King Trust, King Labor, et id omne genus, threatening the subversion of all constitutional civil rights in America, our student thought the great constitutional-liberty-loving parties of the country, at no distant day, would each emulate the other in attracting the voters of seven millions of their fellow-citizens, by favoring the enforcement of those civil rights which were guaranteed by these Constitutional Amendments.
