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bless 'em, had the interesting sensation of
seeing the President turn his scholastic
back upon them as he brought the interview
to an end by abruptly leaving the room.

And both the negroes and the women
were complaining of political discrimination
against them. True, the negro already has
the vote in theory, although not exactly in
practice, in the President's own Southern
States. That may have accounted for the
conciliatory explanations.

The negroes were complaining about the
new rule of segregation that has been in-
troduced into government offices in this
regime. Gradually but effectively the negro
employees of the government have been
segregated so that they do not work side
by side with the white man. That is doubt-
less because so many southerners have been
put into office under this Democratic ad-
ministration, and it takes a real pure blood-
ed Democrat to find official fault with his
darker brother. The President explained
that there had been so much friction that
the segregation became necessary. There
was never any friction when the Republicans
held office. The white men of the Repub-
lican party never felt that horrified sense
of caste defiled when a negro worked in the
same office, performing the same kind of
work. Indeed, he rather gave the impres-
sion of being glad that the dark man was
getting on so well.

Heaven knows I hold no brief for either
women or negroes. Both can be peculiarly
stupid on occasion. All their traditions are
against them. But it is interesting to con-
sider the southern point of view. They
regard the negro in much the same way as
so many men regard women. They are
brought up with them—how many little lord-
ly Democrats have known their sweetest
childhood in the company of their fond,
foolish, black mammy and her offspring.
We all know how intimate the little Demo-
crat of the South becomes with his colored
servitors, how much love and devotion is
expended between them. He practically
learns his whole ideas of life from the ne-
gro in his youth; and all the traditions and
superstitions of Africa are carefully in-
grained into his life. His moral ideals are
largely the negro moral ideals — necessarily,
for we all know how the teaching and un-
derstanding of the first ten years of a childs
life stay with him to the end. The Roman
Catholics have always declared that if they
can have complete infiuence of the child
for those first ten years he is theirs forever.

The southerner lives almost entirely un-
der the domination of his negro servitors in
his youth and he does not consider it infra
dig, to not only have them in the same
household, but to love them sincerely for
their obvious virtues. Yet such a little
while later he is busy repudiating this same
negro just as so many men grow up to
repudiate the worth of women.

But I could not help being impressed with
President Wilson's assertion that the Presi-
dency was not worth having, that the man
who thought it was was a fool! He said
the position was an intolerable burden. We
must remember this when 1916 comes round.

And one of the things he had to do was
to show the women and the negroes that
their place in life had been preordained,
that their duties were quite actual, but a
shade inferior, and that it ill became them
to alter the decree of the Almighty. That
political ambition for equality of treatment
is an impertinence.

While the American people want to sup-
port the advancement of the negro," said
he, "as practical men, everybody knew that
there was a point at which friction was apt
to occur. The question must be stripped of
sentiment and viewed in its facts, because
the facts get the better of the individual
whether one desired it or not."

"The question involved is not a question
of intrinsic qualities, because all had human
souls" (women, you will remember, are hu-
man beings in Callfornia only since they
obtained the franchise!) "and were equal
in that respect, but for the present it was
a question of economic policy whether the
negro race could do the same things as the
white race with equal efficiency."

Substitute women for negroes and you
have the other argument all pat. But what
worries us is that these negroes should have
been given this work to do, these women
should have been allowed to bear these re-
sponsibilities, while it was still a question
whether they could accomplish them with
equal efficiency. Isn't segregation, after the
act, just a shade discriminating?

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