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[96] Negroes be allowed to sit in any part of church? The carpet-baggers, who depend on Negro suffrages, assert that all these privileges spring from the admitted theory of “equal rights.” If White and Black are equal before a judge, they are equal before a car-conductor and a tavern clerk. So say the scalawags. The other side reply that the theory of equal rights implies no privilege of the kind. If two persons are equal, they are free to trade together if they like, and not to trade together unless they like. Equality consists in the right to agree or disagree — to part or join, as each may please. A free man cannot be compelled to buy and sell with another. He who keeps a store is not bound to sell his goods to anyone. He may select his customers. If you run a street car, you have a right to reject the applicant for a seat. In practice you employ that right in the rejection of whole classes. You refuse to carry idiots, beggars, drunkards, rowdies, shameless women. You exclude all persons dressed in rags or grimed with dirt, and you expel all persons using foul expressions. You have to think of decent people and the moral order they require. Opinion rules; and, be you Republican or

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