“Now,” said the President, “since you have been at the head of an important bureau in the Treasury Department during the past four years, a bureau in which a number of white women are employed as clerks, I desire very much to know what has been your experiences along those lines.”  I informed the President that I would take pleasure in giving him the information desired.  I assured him that if my occupancy of that office had been the occasion of the slightest embarrassment to anyone connected with the public service,—­whether in the office over which I presided or any other,—­that fact had never been brought to my notice.  On the contrary, I had every reason to believe that no one who had previously occupied the position enjoyed the respect, good-will and friendship of the clerks and other employees to a greater extent than was enjoyed by me.  My occupancy of that office had more than demonstrated the fact, if such were necessary, that official position and social contact were separate and distinct.  My contact with the clerks and other employees of the office was official, not social.  During office hours they were subject to my direction and supervision in the discharge of their official duties, and I am pleased to say that all of them, without a single exception, have shown me that courtesy, deference and respect due to the head of the office.  After office hours they went their way and I went mine.  No new social ties were created and none were broken or changed as the result of the official position occupied by me.  I assured the President, that, judging from my own experience, he need not have the slightest apprehension of any embarrassment, friction or unpleasantness growing out of the appointment of a colored man of intelligence, good judgment and wise discretion as head of any bureau in which white women were employed.

I could not allow the interview to close without expressing to the President my warm appreciation of his fair, just, reasonable and dignified position on the so-called race question.

“Your attitude,” I said, “if accepted in good faith by your party, will prove to be the solution of this mythical race problem.  Although I am a pronounced Republican, yet, as a colored American, I am anxious to have such a condition of things brought about as will allow a colored man to be a Democrat if he so desires.  I believe you have stated the case accurately when you say that thousands of colored men have voted the Republican ticket at important elections, from necessity and not from choice.  As a Republican, it is my hope that colored as well as white men, act with and vote for the candidates of that party when worthy and meritorious, but as a colored American, I want them to be so situated that they can vote that way from choice and not from necessity.  No man can be a free and independent American citizen who is obliged to sacrifice his convictions upon the altar of his personal safety.  The attitude of the Democratic party upon this so-called race question