At the Edge of the Pit CHAPTER I. "We set up this nation and we proposed to set it up on the rights of man. We did not name any differences between one race and another; we did not set up any barriers against any particular race or people, but opened our gates to the world and said: 'All men who wish to be free, come to us and they will be welcome.'"-President Wilson, July 4th, 1914. There are five human races: In Africa the Ethiopian or Black; in America the Indian or Red; in Asia the Mongolian or Yellow, including the Chinese and Japanese and, also in Asia, the Malays or Brown, including the inhabitants of British India and in Europe the Caucasian. or White. At the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted all the representatives of the Ethiopian race in the United States were slaves of the whites. These slaves or their fathers had been seized in their native Africa, brought to America and sold into slavery, which continued for nearly a century more until they were freed by a Republican president. Ever since their emancipation and at the present time, in states dominated by the Democratic party all persons of African blood are disfranchised, not by law, but in fact. The Indians were here when the whites came, in full possession of their territory and occupied with their own pursuits. They have been exterminated by the whites and today by a long course of decisions of the United States courts the Indians do not own their lands, cannot sell or convey them and are included in a political class with minors, convicts and insane who have no civil rights. The Asiatic races are practically excluded from this country and those here are in many states prohibited from owning land, from acquiring American citizenship and from other civil rights and thus out of the five races into which human beings are divided, four of them have met at the hands of the American people, with slavery, disfranchisement, extermination, exclusion and denial of the ordinary personal property and political rights enjoyed by "Americans." It is a fact too clear for argument that this is a white man's country and a white man's government and that other races, black, yellow, red and brown are not welcome. Mr. Wilson touches on the Mexican question and says: "Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people have not been allowed to have a look-in in regard to their Government and the rights which have been exercised by the other 15 per cent. Do you suppose that circumstance is not sometimes in my thoughts?" These people disqualified are Mexican Indians but they are not disqualified by law any more than the negroes of Louisiana, Mississippi and other southern states under Democratic control are disqualified by law, whereas under the government of Mr. Wilson, American Indians do owe their disqualifications to positive statutory enactments. If Mr. Wilson's bosom, like Mr. Devery's of New York, is agitated by sympathy for the "down-trod," let him begin his charitable work at home among his own American Indians before going abroad for objects of sympathy. |