Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1890 — BOYCOTT THREATENED. [ARTICLE]

BOYCOTT THREATENED.

■•an* the Sooth Will Use if the Election BiU is Passed. An alleged interview with a Southern merchant is sent out from Cincinnati relative to the means that will be to offset the federal election bill. The interview closes in the foilbwing words: “First of all, every Northern product, as far as possible, will be boycotted. Following this will come the most extensive and effectual boycott on class labor ever known to the world. Arrangements are already under way to secure abroad thousands of white laborers and every negro employe in the South will be discharged, and no Southern man will, under any pretext, give one of them employment,, the object being to drive them into the North and West,”

A. B. Picket, editor of the Memphis Avalanche, in an interview published on the 9th says: “The negro question is the paramount issue,” said he. “We don’t care for the tariff. But there is only one way the question can be settled and that is by disfranchisement. Disfranchise the negro and the South will be content, but not until then, for we will not submit to the negro rule. The greatest outrage ever perpetrated in this country was the giving of the franchise to the blacks. Trouble and discontent have reigned ever since, and will continue to reign so long as the negro has a hand in politics. All the whites of the South, Republicans as well as Democrats, recognize this and every looal or State election vote the Democratic ticket. It’s a matter of self preservation with u» and we don’t intend to be crushed. This election law may be passed by Congress but it will be no good. Just how we shell evade it we do not know yet, but we will' find a way if it be passed. We have to a certain extent catered to Northern opinions and given the negroes a show, but they abuse it. Over in Crittenden oounty, Arkansas, for instance, the whites, who are outnumbered 18 to 1 by the negroes, gave the blacks free reign far a time allowing them to elect their own men to every public office except that of Sheriff. They got the, Judgeship and the County Clerk’s offioe.' The occupant of the former was ignorant and the latter drunken.

“The finances of the county got into bad shape, and when at last the negroes doj manded the Sheriff’s office the whites rose, up, took the ringleaders, put them in a skiff on the Mississippi river and shoved themi off. Then they announced that a new eleo-i tion would bo held, and since that time! they have run things themselves. If the! negroes could be disfranchised we would) willingly relinquish whatever Cougres-l sional representation their numbers entitle.”

“Is the disfranchisement idea wide* spread!” “Indeed It is; youdo not hear so much of it because the time is not ripe to secure) definite action, but the time will come, and) when a straw is offered for u* to clutoh at) there will be such a clamor in its favor! as will astonish you. We have the AustralJ ian ballot system In Memphis. The negro* is there and Is a menace. What will help' l us is the influx of Northern capital. We have much of it now, but we want more. The negro being the weaker raoe will be crowded south into Mexico, we hope.”