"COLOUR" QUESTION IN AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 263, 7 November 1901, Page 2

"COLOUR" QUESTION IN AMERICA.

A PUZZLING POLITICAL PROBLEM. Bookxr T. Washington, whose visit to tbe White House a few weeks ago caused a sensation in America, went there by invitation, as the President wished to e 'insult him in regard to his Southern policy. It was a curious circumstance that the man who had been invited to the national capital for a conference with tbe President of the United States thought it necessiry to go to a coeap hotel in an unsavoury part of the city. By experience Washington had learned that the regular hotels of Washington would not wake him welcome.

resident Roosefelt is very much in earnest in his desire to find some satisfactory solution of what is known as the Southern political problem, He is by no means sitisfied with p?rmitting matters to drift along as they have 'bean going, and a new departure is confidently expected by those wlo have conferred with him on the subject. This new doparture in a word means cutting loose from old lines and the appointment of the best men to Federal offices throughout the South, even if they prove to be Democrats, i

Sune months ago Colonel Roosevelt asked Washington what in h ; s opinion should be done to improve tbe ou'look for the party in that section, and to get it out of the clutches of professional politicians and office hucksters who bavo so long ruled it. Colonel Roosevelt wanted to know what was besS for the party and best for the negro.

Washington's reply was that the best policy which could bo adopted by the party leaders at the national capital was to " turn down " the old gangs and to appoint highly respected white nwn to Federal offices—white men who held the confidence of their neighbours and of the public in general; that such appointments should be made without much regard to party lines; that if the man a community wanted for postmaster or collector happened to be a Democrat that fact should be no bar to his selection.