It is needless for me to state that Mr. L., was reinstated within five days from that date and is now on the pay rolls of the Pension Office, drawing his little stipend of nine hundred dollars per annum.
It sometimes happens that a _small man_ gets the position of chief of a division, and by reason of the fact that he has none of the aristocratic blue blood in his veins, but comes from the lower class of white people, and is therefore filled with the prejudice of his kind, he will try hard to get rid of Colored clerks under him, by means which are very questionable. Cases of this kind are rare, but they have occurred under Republican as well as Democratic administrations and I state this, because I have been hearing of such cases during the last fourteen years. Such white men are in all political parties and whenever elevated to power over Colored men, will deal them a blow in the back when they have the opportunity to do so under cover.
Now as to dismissals, reductions and promotions, they have occurred under every administration following a change of political control. They occurred during President Cleveland’s first term and again under President Harrison’s administration, and it is quite reasonable to expect them to occur under the present regime; _because the party in power, will always find some means by which they are enabled to place their political friends in good places_. It was the practice under Republican rule, and it is the practice under Democratic rule and, in my opinion, it will always be the custom, not only in the Pension Bureau, but in all the departments of the government, even at the expense of reducing their opponents to lower grade in pay.
Of the one hundred and twenty-five Colored employes, borne on the pay-rolls of the United States Pension Office, on November 7, 1892, there was only one man who claimed to be a Democrat, and he hails from the South and was then, and is now, a $1400 clerk. There were four or five Colored employes, who opposed President Harrison’s renomination, but when he received it they quieted down like good party men, but after Harrison’s defeat, they commenced to trim sail, as it were, and by March 5, 1893, they had become fullfledged “After Election Democrats.”