THE PRESIDENT AND THE NEGROES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIX, Issue 13066, 4 March 1903, Page 6

THE PRESIDENT AND THE NEGROES.

Ir the, Government chose to appoint as Collector of Customs at Christchurch a man who was personally disliked by half the community, .the public would acquiesce in the act. It would not occur to them to attempt to bounce the Administration into cancelling the appointment. It is t therefore, well nigh impossible for us to understand the position that was created in the Southern States'when President Roosevelt appointed Dr Crum, a negro. Collector of Customs at Charleston. Wo need not repeat what has already been said regarding that incident. It was the first severe blow dealt by the President to the prejudices of the South, but it was not the beginning of his unpopularity. The feelings of the Southerners had already been roused—outraged they called it—when Mr Booker T. Washington, an able and cultured negro, was entertained at dinner at White House. The Charleston incident made it deal" that the President was not to be lightly turned aside from the course he considered righteous. The uproar that followed the appointment had not subsided when the Administration closed the Post Office at Indianola -because of the persecution of the black postmistress, and now the outcry is so loud and so insistent that the President has warned the Southerner's that he is determined at all costs to carry out his settled policy. Federal appointments in the United States are mainly, but not entirely, political. As the head of the Republican Party, the President naturally gives most of the posts to Republicans, but if a suitable member of the Party is not available a Democrat may be selected. Some of Mr Roosevelt's earliest appointments in the South were thus given to Democrats. The rule has always been to consult local representatives in making selections for purely local positions. The system was political in origin, but is defended now on the' ground that the Administration cannot be expected to know all about the home standing and capabilities of applicants, and so the President relies for “ assistance ” on the advice of Senators and representatives. It is contended that this rule has been strictly followed in all recent cases. The President claims that his first aim in making appointments must be to secure good men. When he finds a man who is competent in every way, it would be, in his own words, “ beneath his dignity and derogatory to Ms self-respect and his respect for his office to refuse to appoint that man on no other ground than that his skin happens to be black.” He is guided, it seems, by the Biblical maxim that he- that observethf the wind will not sow and he that regardetih the clouds will not reap, and. so the fierce blast of hostile public opinion and the clouds of unpopularity in the South arc not permitted to disturb his settled course. His attitude is absolutely just, and he declines even to admit that he is on his defence. He has been threatened with political extinction, but surely for every supporter ho loses in this dispute he must gain another by his firmness and justice., and all the evidence convinces us that the President is strong-minded enough to prefer loss of office to loss of self-rcspedt.