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Untitled, April 5, 1864.
The degradation of white labor by associating white working men with negroes upon an equality of terms, is one of the first fruits of abolitionism. It has found men low enough in this city to practice it, and we call the attention of white mechanics and laborers to this instance of an attempt to force white mechanics to work in the same shop with Ethiopian negroes. Yesterday morning, six journeymen shoemakers of this city upon entering the shop where they were regularly employed, found three coal-black contrabands occupying the benches, and at work in the most unconcerned and nonchalant manner conceivable. Upon expressing their indignation to the proprietors, they were informed that he would employ negroes if he chose, and if white people did not like it, they might pack their kits and leave his shop. Of course, no white man, unless he were a miscegen, would seat himself alongside a negro fellow workman, and the six journeymen accordingly left the shop. The name of this proprietor is Sidney Lanpheur, and we publish it in the hope that respectable citizens will studiously avoid his shop hereafter. He should be prosecuted, in company with his black proteges, for violating the laws of the state.
Now, white men, you are to-day to have an opportunity of voting for or against this practical exemplification of the abolition theory of miscegenation. If it is your will that negroes shall be imported into this state to fill the workshops and other fields of labor while you are excluded, vote the abolition ticket. Should they succeed in carrying the next state election, they will infallibly repeal the laws prohibiting negroes from coming into the state, as have their friends in Iowa. They will also admit negro children to the public schools, as they have done in Minnesota. They will allow negroes to vote, as they have done in the District of Columbia. They will, in short, make the negro the complete political and social equal of the white laboring man, so far as they have the power.
But if you want Illinois preserved for white men, and to keep labor form being degraded as abolitionism attempts to degrade it, vote the democratic ticket.