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1251. South 18th Street
April 19, 1913.

President Woodrow Wilson
The White House

Dear Mr President:-

I enclose a series of editorials on the Negro quest-
ion which have been running in the Philadelphia Public Ledger every
day since Monday, April 14th, and shall continue for two or three days
next week. You are doubtless familiar enough with the peculiar work
which I have long been attempting on this question to recognise be-
fore reading many of the editorials that their central purpose was
to center public attention on our specific efforts. Indeed, it was
by the direct personal request of some of the foremost white cler-
gymen of this city that The Ledger was induced to take up this mat-
ter.

The Ledger, as you know, owned as it is by the Curtis Pub-
lishing Company, publishers of the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies
Home Journal, etc., is one of the most powerful and infiuential news
papers in this country, and the significance of its thus opening its
editorial columns to the cause of the Negro is, therefore, apparent.
But, in long personal interviews with the proprietors of this paper,
they agreed with the delegation that called on them that the move-
ment which we represent is one that embraces boundless possibili-
ties in righteously adjusting relations between the races; and they
assured us that we will have their hearty co-operation in making it
a complete success. The unprecedented series of editorials which,
they are running (and which far transcend our most sanguine hopes)
are sufficient evidence of their sincerity.

I scarcely need to tell you that the ideas gradually un-
folded by these editorials represent what it has taken me nearly
twenty years to evolve, and what every open-minded person who ex-
amines them agree embrace an imediately operative, harmonious and
thoroughly practical solution to every many of the most vexatious- di
differences between the races. Knowing your deep interest in this
entire question, I shall take the liberty to send you the renainder
of this series of editorials when they appear.

Your humble servant,

J.T. Semons
Field Secretary.

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