Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1902 — Crumpacker's Bill Goes Glimmering. [ARTICLE]

Crumpacker's Bill Goes Glimmering.

A press dispatch from Washington, date March sth says; The Speaker and his committee on rules have practically refused to report a rule providing for the appointment of a committee of . eleven as authorizod by Mr. Crumpacker’s caucus resolution, to investigate the question of Southern representation in Congress. Representative Crlimpacker has abandoned hope of action by the committee. He saM today that other friends of the proposed inquiry were still laboring with the committee on rules, but he does not believe they can move the Speaker and Representative Dalzell. The Republican has never believed, for an instant, that there: was any prospect of Mr. Crum-’ packer’s own and only pet measure i ever becoming a law. The leaders of the party have never been in favor of the measure, not believing it to be the proper method to remedy the evil of Negro disfran- | chisment in the south. To ns it j always seemed like his proposed ' measure was practically saying to * these southern states, that the j Republicans accepts Negro dis- j franchisment as an accomplished and settled fact. And being so settled and accomplished we, the Republicans of the North propose to put a chincher on disfranchisement by taking our"share of the benefits. And we will take that share in the form of reduced Dem-

ocratic representation in Congress and in the Democratic electoral vote. And in truth the arguments advanced by Mr. Crumpacker in advocacy of his bill have been along this very line, if he has been correctly quoted by such papers as the Indianapolis Journal. Namely that disfranchisement is a settled fact and the Republicans are going to get their share of the benefits. And in any case that would have been the only result of the bill. It might have increased the relative power of the Republican party in the country, but it would not have been of the least possible benefit to the Negroes. No southern state would think for an instant of relaxing their disfranchisement laws because of the loss of a few members of Congress, and of a few electoral votes. On the other hand, hadr this bill became a law these southerners would be in a position to say that the Republicans were voluntarily sharing the benefits of Negro disfranchisement, and were therefore no long er in a position to protest against it.