66

government
the Cabinet have established [?]
departments; and, as the President well
knows, insolent conduct is not confined
to the members of any particular race.

The President should have foreseen
this unfortunate issue when Mr. McAdoo
and Mr. Burleson were carrying their
color-line theories into democratic gov-
ernment. Mr. Wilson told the commit-
tee that there had been no discrimina-
tion in the comforts and surroundings
of the negro clerks, but explained that
"he had been informed by officials that
the segregation had been started to avoid
friction between the races, and not with
the object of injuring the negroes." The
President failed to explain, nevertheless
why no such rule had been considered
necessary until Mr. Burleson and Mr.
McAdoo got into the Cabinet.

For nearly half a century white clerks
and negro clerks have worked side by
side in the departments of Washington,
under Republican and under Democratic
Presidents. The World Keeps itself fair-
ly well informed about Washingion af-
fairs, but the first it ever heard of this
alleged friction to which Mr. Wilson re-
fers was when Mr. McAdoo began his
Jim-Crow proceedings in the Treasury
Department.

The President thinks that this is not
a political question, but he is wrong.
Anything that is unjust, discriminating,
and un-American in government is cer-
tain to be a potitical question. Servants
of the United States Government are
servants of the United States Govern-
ment, regardless of race or color. For
several years a negro has been Collector
of Internal Revenue in New York. He
never found it necessary to segregate
the white employees of his department
to prevent "friction"; yet he would have
had quite as much right to do so as Mr.
McAdoo had to segregate the negro em-
ployees of the Treasury in Washington.

While the Democrats of the country
have been trying to solve certain great
problems of government, a few Southern
members of the Cabinet have been al-
lowed to exploit their petty local preju-
dice at the expense of the party's repu-
tation for exact justice.

Whether the President thinks so or
not, the segregation rule was promulgat-
ed as a deliberate discrimination against
negro employees. 84963

Worse still, it is a small, mean, petty
discrimination, and Mr. Wilson ought to
have set his heel upon this presumptu-
ous Jim-Crow government the moment
it was established. He ought to set his
heel upon it now. It is a reproach to
his Administration and to the great po-
litical principles which he represents.