Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
The bill provides, "That the heads of all executive departments shall issue all such orders as shall be necessary to secure in all branches of the civil service of the United States to the utmost extent consistent with public interests, the segregation of civil employees of the white race from those of African blood or descent, in the performance of their services."

It also provides that, "In all executive departments within the District of Columbia, clerks or employees shall not be required to occupy the same office or work rooms with clerks or employees of African blood or descent; nor shall any white clerk or employee be placed under the orders, direction, or supervision of any person of African blood or descent."

It also provides that, "In the railway mail service of the Post-office 15Department white clerks shall not, except in cases of emergency, be ordered to duty in the same mail car with postal clerks of African blood or descent."

15

You will notice that the course which he recommends here, and which he seeks to enforce by law, is not because the Negro is ignorant, not because he is inefficient, not because he is ungentlemanly in his deportment; but simply because he is a Negro, or has Negro blood in his veins. The fact that he is in the service at all proves that he isn't ignorant, that he isn't inefficient, for he is there as the result of civil service examination. It makes no difference how much he knows, how efficient he is, how gentlemanly he is, the thing that makes him objectionable is that he is a Negro, or is of Negro descent. It doesn't make any difference how highly cultivated he is, it becomes, in the language of the Representative from Louisiana, "an intolerable humiliation for a white man to be compelled, in order to earn his daily bread, to work side by side with an objectionable people." It isn't the condition of the people; it isn't their backwardness that discounts them, but the fact that they are of African blood or descent.

Senator Vardaman, in his insane ravings over the nomination by President Wilson of Adam E. Patterson, a colored man from Oklahoma, as Register of the Treasury, speaks in the same strain. He says:

"The appointment of Patterson is a most unfortunate thing. Two races cannot mix; it is contrary to the laws of nature. I am not acquainted with Patterson. It is not he, personally, I am fighting; it is the principle involved. I do not think any government office should be held by a Negro. I think the defeat of this 
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