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Chapter 23. Trends and Possibilities 519
it from a conservative point of view to begin allowing the higher strata of
the Negro ’population to participate in the political process as soon as pos-
sible, and to push the movement down to the lowest groups gradually.
The more urgent is it also to speed up the civic education of these masses
who are bound to have votes in the future. It would, in this late stage of the
development, be wise also to go the full way and gradually open the white
primary to Negroes. This, actually, would be a means of decreasing the
temptation for defeated primary candidates to break the ^^gentleman’s
agreement” and, consequently, to preserve the one-party system for a
longer time than otherwise would be possible.*’
In their own history of the past century, the Southern conservatives can
see abundantly the negative proofs, and from the history of democratic
politics all over the world the positive proofs, for this thesis, that political
conservatives, who have been successful for any length of time, have always
foreseen impending changes and have put through the needed reforms
themselves in time. By following this tactic they have been able to guard
fundamental conservative interests even in the framing of the reforms.
They have thereby also succeeded in slowing them upj changes have not
overwhelmed them as avalanches. They have kept the control and pre-
served a basis for the retention of their political power. Southern conserva-
tism should further learn from history that, over a period of time, the
conservative forces in a society cannot aflFord to abstain from the tremendous
strategic advantage of forming the party of ^‘law and order.” This is such
an immense interest for conservatism that if—for constitutional and other
reasons—the law does not come to the conservatives even when they are in
power, the conservatives had better come to the law.
But the great majority of Southern conservative white people do not see
the handwriting on the wall. They da not study the impending changes j
they live again in the pathetic illusion that the matter is settled. They do
not care to have any constructive policies to meet the trends. I’hey think
no adjustments are called for. The chances that the future development will
be planned and led intelligently—^and that, consequently, it will take the
form of cautious, foresighted reforms instead of unexpected, tumultuous,
I am here, looking on the problem from a conservative point of view and assuming
that to preserve the one-party system would be desirable. The liberals want, on the con-
trary, to get away from the white primary and from the one-party system altogether, but
they do not anticipate radical changes in the future. They further want to do away with
political discrimination and, therefore, come to the same conclusion:
“For the white South, what is needed above all is fairness, a determination to enforce
suffrage tests equitably on white and black alike, and resolve to break away from the one-
party system and to regain preeminence in the national forums of political action by building
a political system around the live national issues and forgetting the more or less dead issue
of Negro domination.” (T. J. Woofter, Jr., The Basis of Racial /I’ljustment [1925], p.
167.)
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