BOOK III. GREAT SPEECHES ON GREAT ISSUES. (continued 15)

The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. Each was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common—the power to command. In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers; in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in 1841, when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the Whig party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the Senate, against the Herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, in his contests from 1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until Congress tied the hands of the President and governed the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the Executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Steward in the Cabinet and the moral power of Chase on the Bench, Andrew Johnson could not command the support of one-third in either House against the Parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned leader.

From these three great men Garfield differed radically, differed in the quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of ambition. He could not do what they did, but he could do what they could not, and in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will longer exert a potential influence among men, and which, measured by the severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more enduring and more enviable fame.

GARFIELD’S INDUSTRY.

Those unfamiliar with Garfield’s industry and ignorant of the details of his work may, in some degree, measure them by the annals of Congress. No one of the generation of public men to which he belonged has contributed so much that will be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased and exhaustive of the subject under consideration. Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of Congressional Record they would present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the most important era through which the national government has ever passed. When the history of this period shall be impartially written, when war legislation, measures of reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to the constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their true value, and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority were accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives from December 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well connected history and complete defence of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful years that constitute his Parliamentary life. Far beyond that, his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures, yet to be completed—measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently believed would secure popular approval 3247within the period of his own lifetime, and by the aid of his own efforts.

Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of American public life. He perhaps more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his Presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which indeed, in all our public life, have left the great Massachusetts Senator without an intellectual peer.

In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the House of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield. But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong, independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are discernible in that most promising of modern conservatives, who died too early for his country and his fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He had all of Burke’s love for the sublime and the beautiful, with, possibly, something of his superabundance, and in his faith and his magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to-day, who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless, reviled by those whom he would relieve as bitterly as by those whose supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage for the amelioration of Ireland, and for the honor of the English name.

NOMINATION TO THE PRESIDENCY.

Garfield’s nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled to be called statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought him this high honor. “We must,” says Mr. Emerson, “reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust health, and has slept well and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland, he will steer west and his ships will reach New Foundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results.”

As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the close of his victorious campaign:

No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure ’scape; back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confident; never lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-considered word. Indeed nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more creditable than his bearing through those five full months of vituperation—a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a constant and cruel draft upon the powers of moral endurance. The great mass of these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and, with the general debris of the campaign, fell into oblivion. But in a few instances the iron entered his soul and he died with the injury unforgotten if not unforgiven.

One aspect of Garfield’s candidacy was unprecedented. Never before in the history of partisan contests in this country had a successful Presidential candidate spoken freely on passing events and current issues. To attempt anything of the kind seemed novel, rash, and even desperate. The older class of voters recalled the unfortunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay was supposed to have signed his political death-warrant. They remembered also the hot-tempered effusion by which General Scott lost a large share of his popularity before his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly consumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley in a series of vigorous and original addresses, preparing the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these warnings, unheeding the advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large crowds as he journeyed to and from New York in August, to a great multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations of every kind that called at Mentor during the summer and autumn. With innumerable critics, watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his party’s injury, Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he said, and yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such admirable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and the malignity of misrepresentation.

3248

AS PRESIDENT.

In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield’s experience did not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so large a portion of the President’s time were distasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. “I have been dealing all these years with ideas,” he impatiently exclaimed one day, “and here I am dealing only with persons. I have been heretofore treating of the fundamental principles of government, and here I am considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that office.” He was earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy patronage—evils always appreciated and often discussed by him, but whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed upon his mind since his accession to the Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive improvement in the mode of appointment and in the tenure of office would have been proposed by him, and with the aid of Congress no doubt perfected.

But, while many of the Executive duties were not grateful to him, he was assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. From the very outset he exhibited administrative talent of a high order. He grasped the helm of office with the hand of a master. In this respect, indeed, he constantly surprised many who were most intimately associated with him in the government, and especially those who had feared that he might be lacking in the executive faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and rapid. His power of analysis, and his skill in classification, enabled him to despatch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease. His Cabinet meetings were admirably conducted. His clear presentation of official subjects, his well-considered suggestion of topics on which discussion was invited, his quick decision when all had been heard, combined to show a thoroughness of mental training as rare as his natural ability and his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged field of labor.

With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with a cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always by a generous enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be done by his administration towards restoring harmony between the different sections of the Union. He was anxious to go South and speak to the people. As early as April he had ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had been cordially invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks later to find that he could not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial celebration of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn he definitely counted on being present at three memorable assemblies in the South, the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of the Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of the Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already turning over in his mind his address for each occasion, and the three taken together, he said to a friend, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed. At Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hundred years that bound the South and the North in the sacred memory of a common danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present the material interests and the industrial development which appealed to the thrift and independence of every household, and which should unite the two sections by the instinct of self-interest and self-defence. At Chattanooga he would revive memories of the war only to show that after all its disaster and all its suffering, the country was stronger and greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, and the future, through the agony and blood of one generation, made brighter and better for all.

Garfield’s ambition for the success of his administration was high. With strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no danger of attempting rash experiments or of resorting to the empiricism of statesmanship. But he believed that renewed and closer attention should be given to questions affecting the material interests and commercial prospects of fifty millions of people. He believed that our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped as they are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated into profitable friendship or be abandoned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He believed with equal confidence that an essential forerunner to a new era of national progress must be a feeling of contentment in every section of the Union, and a generous belief that the benefits and burdens of government would be common to all. Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability and ambition may do under republican institutions, he loved his country with a passion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to her advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he looked to the destiny and influence of the United States with the philosophic composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence of John Adams.

THE POLITICAL CONTROVERSY.

The political events which disturbed the President’s serenity for many weeks before that fatal day in July form an important chapter in his career, and, in his own judgment, 3249involved questions of principle and of right which are vitally essential to the constitutional administration of the Federal Government. It would be out of place here and now to speak the language of controversy, but the events referred to, however they may continue to be source of contention with others, have become, so far as Garfield is concerned, as much a matter of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his illustrious service in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal antagonism shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. The motives of those opposing him are not to be here adversely interpreted nor their course harshly characterized. But of the dead President this is to be said, and said because his own speech is forever silenced and he can be no more heard except through the fidelity and the love of surviving friends. From the beginning to the end of the controversy he so much deplored, the President was never for one moment actuated by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to others. Least of all men did he harbor revenge, rarely did he even show resentment, and malice was not in his nature. He was congenially employed only in the exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly deeds.

There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the fatal shot entered his body, when the President would not gladly, for the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced any step he had taken if such retracing had merely involved consequences personal to himself. The pride of consistency, or any supposed sense of humiliation that might result from surrendering his position, had not a feather’s weight with him. No man was ever less subject to such influences from within or from without. But after the most anxious deliberation and the coolest survey of all the circumstances, he solemnly believed that the true prerogatives of the Executive were involved in the issue which had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, in all their vigor, the constitutional rights and dignities of his great office. He believed this in all the convictions of conscience when in sound and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostration in the last conscious thought which his wearied mind bestowed on the transitory struggles of life.

More than this need not be said. Less than this could not be said. Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the living, demands the declaration that in all the bearings of the subject, actual or possible, the President was content in his mind, justified in his conscience, immovable in his conclusions.

GARFIELD’S RELIGION.

The religious element in Garfield’s character was deep and earnest. In his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that great Baptist Communion which in different ecclesiastical establishments is so numerous and so influential throughout all parts of the United States. But the broadening tendency of his mind and his active spirit of inquiry were early apparent and carried him beyond the dogmas of sect and the restraints of association. In selecting a college in which to continue his education he rejected Bethany, though presided over by Alexander Campbell, the greatest preacher of his church. His reasons were characteristic: first, that Bethany leaned too heavily toward slavery; and, second, that being himself a Disciple and the son of Disciple parents, he had little acquaintance with people of other beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, quoting his own words, both in his religious and general views, to go into a new circle and be under new influences.

The liberal tendency which he had anticipated as the result of wider culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian belief, and with eager interest pushed his investigations in the direction of modern progressive thought. He followed with quickening step in the paths of exploration and speculation so fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by other living scientists of the radical and advanced type. His own church, binding its disciples by no formulated creed, but accepting the Old and New Testaments as the word of God, with unbiased liberality of private interpretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of investigation. Its members profess with sincerity, and profess only, to be of one mind and one faith with those who immediately followed the Master, and who were first called Christians at Antioch.

But however high Garfield reasoned of “fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,” he was never separated from the Church of the Disciples in his affections and in his associations. For him it held the ark of the covenant. To him it was the gate of Heaven. The world of religious belief is full of solecisms and contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that men by the thousand will die in defence of a creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend and whose tenets they habitually violate. It is equally true that men by the thousand will cling to church organizations with instinctive and undenying fidelity when their belief in maturer years is radically different from that which inspired them as neophytes.

But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of doubt, Garfield came back 3250always with freshness and delight to the simpler instincts of religious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest survive. Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on these topics of personal religion, concerning which noble natures have an unconquerable reserve, he said that he found the Lord’s Prayer and the simple petitions learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of scripture had a very strong hold on his memory and his heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the subject of careful study with Garfield during his religious life. He was greatly impressed by the elocution of the preacher and declared that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic utterances of Saint Paul. He referred often in after years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exaltation of feeling upon the radiant promise and the assured hope with which the great apostle of the Gentiles was “persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor powers nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The crowning characteristic of General Garfield’s religious opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities which he possessed himself—sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. With him the inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but does he believe it? The lines of his friendship and his confidence encircled men of every creed, and men of no creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever lengthening list of friends, were to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest-minded and generous-hearted free-thinker.

THE ASSASSIN’S BULLET.

On the morning of Saturday, July 2d, the President was a contented and happy man—not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure, and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that troubles lay behind him and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen.

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident, in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death—and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood’s friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood’s day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation’s love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his 3251suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin’s bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on its far sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.

AFTER THE ORATION.

The eulogy was concluded at 1.50, having taken just an hour and a half in its delivery. As Mr. Blaine gave utterance to the last solemn words the spectators broke into a storm of applause, which was not hushed for some moments. The address was listened to with an intense interest and in solemn silence, unbroken by any sound except by a sigh of relief (such as arises from a large audience when a strong tension is removed from their minds) when the orator passed from his allusion to differences existing in the Republican party last spring. Benediction was then offered by the Rev. Dr. Bullock, Chaplain of the Senate. The Marine Band played the “Garfield Dead March” as the invited guests filed out of the Chamber in the same order in which they had entered it. The Senate was the last to leave, and then the House was called to order by the Speaker.

Mr. McKinley, of Ohio, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, The Senate concurring, that the thanks of Congress are hereby presented to the Hon. James G. Blaine for the appropriate memorial address delivered by him on the life and services of James A. Garfield, late President of the United States, in the Representative Hall, before both houses of Congress and their invited guests, on the 27th of February, 1882, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication.

Resolved, That the Chairman of the Joint Committee appointed to make the necessary arrangements to carry into effect the resolution of Congress in relation to the memorial exercises in honor of James A. Garfield be requested to communicate to Mr. Blaine the foregoing resolution, receive his answer thereto and present the same to both Houses of Congress. The resolution was adopted unanimously.

Mr. McKinley then offered the following:

Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the deceased President of the United States the House do now adjourn.

The resolution was unanimously adopted, and in accordance therewith the Speaker at 1.55 declared the House adjourned until to-morrow.

CIVIL SERVICE.

Improvement of the Subordinate Civil Service.

Speech of Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, in the Senate of the United States, Tuesday, December 12, 1882.

On the bill (S. 133) to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States.

Mr. Pendleton said:

Mr. President: When I assented yesterday that this bill should be informally laid aside without losing its place, I had no set speech to deliver, nor had I the intention of preparing a speech for to-day. I did not intend to hold up the bill here as an obstruction to any business before the Senate, or as an aid in passing any measure that might receive my approbation, as my good Friend, the Senator from Kansas [Mr. Plumb], so politely intimated. The bill providing for a bankrupt law was very speedily, and to me unexpectedly, disposed of yesterday, and this bill was called up several hours earlier than I supposed it would be, and I thought the convenience of the Senate as well as of myself would be subserved if I 3252had an opportunity to condense what I had to say on the subject.

The necessity of a change in the civil administration of this government has been so fully discussed in the periodicals and pamphlets and newspapers, and before the people, that I feel indisposed to make any further argument. This subject, in all its ramifications, was submitted to the people of the United States at the fall elections, and they have spoken in no low or uncertain tone.

I do not doubt that the local questions exerted great influence in many States upon the result; but it is my conviction, founded on the observation of an active participation in the canvass in Ohio, that dissatisfaction with the methods of administration adopted by the Republican party in the past few years was the most important single factor in reaching the conclusion that was attained. I do not say that the civil service of the Government is wholly bad. I can not honestly do so. I do not say that the men who are employed in it are all corrupt or inefficient or unworthy. That would do a very great injustice to a great number of faithful, honest, and intelligent public servants. But I do say that the civil service is inefficient; that it is expensive; that it is extravagant; that it is in many cases and in some senses corrupt; that it has welded the whole body of its employès into a great political machine; that it has converted them into an army of officers and men, veterans in political warfare, disciplined and trained, whose salaries, whose time, whose exertions at least twice within a very short period in the history of our country have robbed the people of the fair results of Presidential elections.

I repeat, Mr. President, that the civil service is inefficient, expensive, and extravagant and that it is in many instances corrupt. Is it necessary for me to prove facts which are so patent that even the blind must see and the deaf must hear?

At the last session of Congress, in open Senate, it was stated and proven that in the Treasury Department at Washington there were 3,400 employès, and that of this number the employment of less than 1,600 was authorized by law and appropriations made for their payment, and that more than 1,700 were put on or off the rolls of the Department at the will and pleasure of the Secretary of the Treasury, and paid not out of appropriations made for that purpose but out of various funds and balances of appropriation lapsed in the Treasury in one shape or another, which are not by law appropriated to the payment of these employès. I was amazed. I had never before heard that such a state of affairs existed. I did not believe that it was possible until my honorable colleague rose in his place and admitted the general truth of the statement and defended the system as being necessary for the proper administration of the Treasury Department.

Mr. President, we see in this statement whence comes that immense body of public officials, inspectors, detectives, deputies, examiners, from the Treasury Department who have for years past been sent over the States for the purpose of managing Presidential conventions and securing Presidential elections at the public expense.

I hold in my hand a statement made before the committee which reported this bill, showing that in one of the divisions of the Treasury Department at Washington where more than nine hundred persons were employed, men and women, five hundred and more of them were entirely useless, and were discharged without in any degree affecting the efficiency of the bureau. I read from the testimony taken before the committee. Every gentleman can find it if he has not it already on his table. The statement to which I refer I read from page 121 of report of committee No. 576:

The extravagance of the present system was well shown in the examination of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing by a committee of which I was chairman. Of a force of nine hundred and fifty-eight persons five hundred and thirty-nine, with annual salaries amounting to $390,000, were found to be superfluous and were discharged. The committee reported that for years the force in some branches had been twice and even three times as great as the work required. In one division—

I beg Senators to listen to this—

In one division a sort of platform had been built underneath the iron roof, about seven feet above the floor, to accommodate the surplus counters. It appeared that the room was of ample size without this contrivance for all persons really needed. In another division were found twenty messengers doing work which it was found could be done by one. The committee reported that the system of patronage was chiefly responsible for the extravagance and irregularities which had marked the administration of the bureau, and declared that it had cost the people millions of dollars in that branch of the service alone. Under this system the office had been made to subserve the purpose of an almshouse or asylum.

In consequence of this report the annual appropriation for the Printing Bureau was reduced from $800,000 to $200,000, and out of the first year’s savings was built the fine building now occupied by that bureau.

And again, on page 126, this same gentleman says:

My observation teaches me there is more pressure and importunity for these places—

That is, the $900 clerkship—

3253and that more time is consumed by heads of Departments, and those having the appointing power, in listening to applications for that grade than for all the other places in the Departments combined; and that when it is discretionary with a Department to appoint a man or a woman the choice is usually exercised in favor of the woman. I know a recent case in the Treasury Department where a vacancy occurred which the head of the bureau deemed it important to fill with a man. It was a position where a man’s services were almost indispensable; but the importunity was so great that he was compelled to accept a woman, although her services were not required. In consequence of this importunity for places for women a practice has grown up in the Treasury Department of allowing the salaries of the higher grades of clerkships to lapse when vacancies occur, and of dividing up the amount among clerks, usually women, at lower salaries. In the place of a male clerk at $1,800 a year, for instance, three women may be employed at $600. Often the services of a man are required in its higher grade, while the women are not needed at all; but as the man can not be employed without discharging the women he can not be had. The persons employed in this way are said to be “on the lapse.” Out of this grew the practice known in Departmental language as “anticipating the lapse.”

In the endeavor to satisfy the pressure for place more people are appointed on this roll than the salaries then lapsing will warrant, in the hope that enough more will lapse before the end of the fiscal year to provide funds for their payment. But the funds almost always run short before the end of the year, and then either the “lapse” appointees must be dropped or clerks discharged from the regular roll to make place for them. In some instances, in former administrations, the employès on the regular roll were compelled, under terror of dismissal, to ask for leaves of absence, without pay, for a sufficient time to make up the deficiency caused by the appointment of unnecessary employès “on the lapse”. Another bad feature is that these “lapse” employès being appointed without regard to the necessities of the work, for short periods and usually without regard to their qualifications, are of little service, while their employment prevents the filling of vacancies on the regular roll and demoralizes the service.

In one case thirty-five persons were put on the “lapse fund” of the Treasurer’s office for eight days at the end of the fiscal year, to sop up some money which was in danger of being saved and returned to the Treasury.

Mr. Maxey. Do I understand the Senator to say that that testimony was taken by the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment?

Mr. Pendleton. Yes sir. This testimony was taken in the month of March, I think, of the present year.

Says this gentleman further—

I have no doubt that under a rigid application of this proposed system the work of the Treasury Department could be performed with two-thirds the number of clerks now employed, and that is a moderate estimate of the saving.

Mr. President, a Senator who is now present in the Chamber and who will recognize the statement when I make it, though I shall not indicate his name, told me that the Secretary of one of the Departments of the Government said to him, perhaps to the Committee on Appropriations, at the last session, that there were seventeen clerks in his Department for whom he could find no employment; that he did need one competent clerk of a higher grade, and if the appropriation were made for that one clerk, at the proper amount according to the gradations of the service and the appropriation for the seventeen were left out, he could, without impairing the efficiency of his Department, leave those seventeen clerks off the roll; but if the appropriation should be made the personal, social, and political pressure was so great that he would be obliged to employ and pay them, though he could find no employment for them.

Need I prove, Mr. President, that which is known to all men, that a systematic pressure has been brought upon the clerks in the Departments of the Government this year to extort from them a portion of their salary under a system which the President himself scouts as being voluntary, and that they are led to believe and fairly led to believe that they have bought and paid for the offices which they hold and that the good faith of those who take from them a portion of the salary is pledged to their retention in their positions?

I have said before upon the floor of the Senate that this whole system demoralizes everybody who is engaged in it. It demoralizes the clerks who are appointed. That is inevitable. It demoralizes those who make the appointment. That also is inevitable. And it demoralizes Senators and Representatives who by the exercise of their power as Senators and Representatives exert pressure upon the appointing power.

I repeat that this system, permeating the whole civil service of the country, demoralizes everybody connected with it, the clerks, the appointing power, and those who by their official position and their relations to the executive administration of the Government have the influence necessary to put these clerks in office.

Mr. President, how can you expect purity, economy, efficiency to be found anywhere in the service of the Government if the report made by this committee to the Senate has even the semblance of truth? If the civil service of the country is to be filled up with superfluous persons, if salaries are to be increased in order that assessments may be paid, if members of Congress having friends or partisan supporters are to be able to make places for them in 3254public employment, how can you expect Senators and Representatives to be economical and careful in the administration of the public money?

I am sure there is no Senator here who will forget a scene which we had upon the last night session of the last session, when the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Allison], the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the official leader of the Senate, rising in his place with the last appropriation bill in his hand, and the report of the committee of conference, made a statement to the Senate of the result of the appropriations. He stated that the appropriations that were made during that session amounted to $292,000,000—I throw off the fractions—and he felicitated the Senate and himself as the organ and mouthpiece of his party, that this was an excess of only $77,000,000 over and above the expenditures of the year before. Instantly the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Platt] rose in his place and reminded the Senator that there would be a deficiency in the Pension Bureau alone of $20,000,000 or $25,000,000. The honorable Senator from Georgia, who now occupies the chair [Mr. Brown], inquired of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations whether there would be any deficiencies in the expenses of the current year, or whether the statement was supposed to cover probable deficiencies in addition to the appropriations, and the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck], certainly as familiar with all these subjects as any member of this body, rose in his place and said that notwithstanding the utmost scrutiny of the Committee on Appropriations, undoubtedly at the end of the fiscal year the ordinary deficiencies would be found.

Two hundred and ninety-two millions of dollars of regular appropriations; $20,000,000 of deficiency in one bureau alone, the usual deficiencies occurring during the course of the year of $20,000,000 more! As if this were not enough, my honorable colleague arose in his place and took up the tale and called attention to the fact that the permanent appropriations amounted annually to one hundred and thirty-seven or more millions of dollars. According to his statement made in that speech, which I am sure nobody will forget, the expenditures of the Government during this present fiscal year would amount to $402,000,000 or $403,000,000—nearly $9 a head for every man, woman, and child in the United States—more money than was appropriated for all the expenses of the Government during the first forty years of its existence, I will venture to say, though I do not speak by the book.

Harbor and river appropriation bills of $18,000,000! Thirty-two new buildings commenced in the States, almost every one of which has had buildings before! Two million five hundred thousand dollars appropriated for the commencement of those buildings, for laying the foundation! Before they are finished $25,000,000 more will be needed to complete them! While these enormous appropriations were being made there came up from the country a demand for a revision of the tariff, which was confessedly greatly needed; for a revision of the internal-revenue laws, which was equally necessary; for a reduction of taxation pressing so heavily upon all the interests of the country. Our honorable friends upon the other side of the Chamber chose to answer that demand by a bill repealing the taxes upon perfumery and cosmetics and bank checks, and met with a sneer of derision and ridicule every effort that was made on this side of the Chamber for a reduction of taxation.

Mr. President, it was these methods of administration, it was these acts of the Republican party, which made it possible for the Democratic party, and other men who prized their country higher than they did their party, to elect in Ohio a Democratic ticket by eighteen or twenty thousand majority, and elect sixteen out of the twenty-one members of Congress assigned to that State. I say elected sixteen, perfectly conscious of the fact that thirteen of them only have received their certificates at present. If three of them, against whom the aggregate majority is only sixty votes, do not receive certificates under the action of the returning board or under the powers of our judiciary which have been invoked, they will be seated, as they ought to be, at the beginning of the next session of Congress in the other house.

Under the impulse of this election in Ohio, upon these facts and influences which I have stated as being of great importance there, it became possible for the Democratic party and its allies, whom I have described, to elect a Democratic governor in New York, in Massachusetts, in Kansas, in Michigan, and various other States in which there has been none but a Republican governor for many years past. The same influences enable us, having accessions to our ranks from Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, to have at the beginning of the next session of Congress an aggregate of perhaps sixty or more Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Hale. Will the Senator from Ohio let me ask him a question right here? As he is confining himself very closely to the civil service of the Government, I should like to ask him one question here relating to that. He has appealed directly 3255to the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, who was not present at the time, although he has just come in. The Senator from Ohio has alluded to the remarkable speech made by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations upon the expenditures of the Government at the last session, and the wonderful scene that was exhibited there at that time. In that speech on the expenditures of the Government, by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, was the admission that the aggregate expenditures were seventy-odd millions of dollars more than the year before—remarkable when in that speech of the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, he showed that every dollar was accounted for by deficiencies on the part of the previous Democratic Congress and by the increase of pensions and some other matters.

Mr. Pendleton. I remember the speech of the Senator from Iowa very well; I have quoted it repeatedly from the Record, in which I found it. I did him no injustice; I know he will not believe I would intentionally do him injustice at any time. I stated then, I stated a moment ago, I have stated it on the stump, I repeat it now, that the Senator from Iowa in that speech said that the appropriations for the current year were $292,000,000, and that they were $77,000,000 in excess of those made for the last year: and I might have added if I chose to make it a partisan affair, that the last Congress was under Democratic control.

Mr. Hale. And did he not account for every dollar of that $77,000,000 increase? But I think I will leave it to him, as he is present now.

Mr. Pendleton. Undoubtedly he accounted for it, for he gave all the items that went to make up the $77,000,000.

I am confining myself more closely, Mr. President, to the discussion of the reform of the civil service of the Government than the Senator seems to apprehend. I was showing to him the causes of this very remarkable revolution in public sentiment which we have seen as exhibited by the last election. I attributed that result in great measure to the defects in our civil-service system and to the demoralization which, arising there and in its practices, has reached the other departments of the Government.

Mr. President, I was about to say when the Senator from Maine interrupted me that I begged gentlemen on this side of the Chamber and I beg the Democratic party throughout the country not to mistake this result of last fall as a purely Democratic triumph. It was achieved by the Democratic party with the assistance of men of all parties upon whom their love of country sat heavier than their love of party. It was a protest made by an awakened people who were indignant at the wrongs which had been practiced upon them. It was a tentative stretching out of that same people to find instrumentalities by which those wrongs could be righted.

The people demanded economy and the Republican party gave them extravagance. The people demanded a reduction of taxation and the Republican party gave them an increase of expenditure. The people demanded purity of administration and the Republican party revelled in profligacy; and when the Republican party came to put themselves on trial before that same people the people gave them a day of calamity.

I beg that my colleagues on this side of the Chamber may remember, I desire that our party associates throughout the country shall remember, that the people will continue to us their confidence and increase it, that they will continue to us power and increase it, just in the proportion that we honestly and fairly and promptly answer to the demands which the people have made, and which were thus responded to by the Republican party. They asked revenue reform and they received none. They asked civil-service reform and they obtained none. They asked that the civil service of this Government should not either as to its men or its expenditures be made the basis upon which political contests were to be carried on, and they received for answer that that was an old fashion and a good method of political warfare.

I beg gentlemen upon this side of the Chamber to remember that if they desire to escape the fate which now seems to be impending over their adversaries they must avoid the example which those adversaries have set them.

Mr. President the bill which I have the honor to advocate to-day, and which is reported by a committee of the Senate, is the commencement, in my humble judgment, of an attempt to answer one of the demands which the people have authoritatively made. I speak advisedly. It is the commencement of an attempt to organize a system which shall respond to one of the demands which the people have made.

I suppose the most enthusiastic supporter of this bill will not pretend that it is perfect. I suppose he will not pretend that upon the adoption of this bill a system will immediately spring into life which will perfect and purify the civil service of the Government. But it is the commencement of an attempt to lay the foundations of a system which, if it shall answer in any reasonable degree the expectation 3256of those who by experience and faithful study have framed it, it will in the end correct the abuses to which I have alluded, and which have been delineated by no enemy of the Republican party or of the Administration in the report which I have read to the Senate.

The bill has for its foundation the simple and single idea that the offices of the Government are trusts for the people; that the performance of the duties of those offices is to be in the interests of the people; that there is no excuse for the being of one office or the paying of one salary except that it is in the highest practicable degree necessary for the welfare of the people; that every superfluous office-holder should be cut off; that every incompetent office-holder should be dismissed; that the employment of two where one will suffice is robbery; that salaries so large that they can submit to the extortion, the forced payment of 2 or 10 per cent. are excessive and ought to be diminished. I am not speaking of purely voluntary contributions.

If it be true that offices are trusts for the people, then it is also true that the offices should be filled by those who can perform and discharge the duties in the best possible way. Fidelity, capacity, honesty, were the tests established by Mr. Jefferson when he assumed the reins of government in 1801. He said then, and said truly, that these elements in the public offices of the Government were necessary to an honest civil service, and that an honest civil service was essential to the purity and efficiency of administration, necessary to the preservation of republican institutions.

Mr. Jefferson was right. The experience of eighty years has shown it. The man best fitted should be the man placed in office, especially if the appointment is made by the servants of the people. It is as true as truth can be that fidelity, capacity, honesty, are essential elements of fitness, and that the man who is most capable and most faithful and most honest is the man who is the most fit, and he should be appointed to office.

These are truths that in their statement will be denied by none, and yet the best means of ascertaining that fitness has been a vexed question with every Administration of this Government and with every man who has been charged with the responsibility of its execution. We know what is the result. Pass examinations have been tried; professions have been tried; honest endeavors have been tried; a disposition to live faithfully up to these requirements has been tried; and yet we know and the experience of to-day shows it, that they have all made a most lamentable failure. We do now know that so great has been the increase of the powers of this Government and the number of officers under it that no President, no Cabinet, no heads of bureaus, can by possibility know the fitness of all applicants for the subordinate offices of the Government. The result has been, and under the existing system it must always be, that the President and his Cabinet and those who are charged with the responsibility have remitted the question of fitness to their own partisan friends, and those partisan friends have in their turn decided the question of fitness in favor of their partisan friends. The Administration has need of the support of members of Congress in carrying on its work. It therefore remits to members of Congress of its own party the questions of appointment to office in the various districts. These gentlemen, in the course of their political life, naturally (I do not find fault with them for it) find themselves under strain and pressure to secure a nomination or a re-nomination or election, and they use the places to reward those whose friends and families and connections and aids and deputies will serve their purpose.

I put it to gentlemen, particularly to my friends on this side of the Chamber, because you have not the opportunity to exercise this patronage as much as our friends on the other side, whether or not the element of fitness enters largely into the questions of appointment in your respective districts and States. It can not be. The necessities of the case prevent it. The pressure upon men who want to be elected prevents it. The demands that are made by partisan friends and those who have been influential and potent in securing personal triumph to gentlemen who may happen to be in such relation to the appointing power that they have the influence to secure appointment prevent it. The result is as I have stated, that instead of making fitness, capacity, honesty, fidelity the only or the essential qualifications for office, personal fidelity and partisan activity alone control.

When I came to the Senate I had occasion more than ever before to make some investigation upon the subject, and found to my surprise the extent to which the demoralization of the service had gone. I saw the civil service debauched and demoralized. I saw offices distributed to incompetent and unworthy men as a reward for the lowest of dirty partisan work. I saw many men employed to do the work of one man. I saw the money of the people shamefully wasted to keep up electioneering funds by political assessments on salaries. I saw the whole body of the public officers paid by the people organized into a compact, disciplined corps of electioneerers 3257obeying a master as if they were eating the bread of his dependence and rendering him personal service. I saw these evils were fostered, encouraged, stimulated very largely by Senators and Representatives. They had their friends who lent them a helping hand; and regardless of the fitness of these friends, of the necessity of their employment, they insisted on the appointment and had the power, which on consideration, was found sufficient to secure it.

I believed then, and I believe now, that the existing system which, for want of a better name, I call the “spoils system,” must be killed or it will kill the Republic. I believe that it is impossible to maintain free institutions in the country upon any basis of that sort. I am no prophet of evil, I am not a pessimist in any sense of the word, but I do believe that if the present system goes on until 50,000,000 people shall have grown into 100,000,000, and 140,000 officers shall have grown into 300,000, with their compensation in proportion, and all shall depend upon the accession of one party or the other to the Presidency and to the executive functions, the Presidency of the country, if it shall last in name so long, will be put up for sale to the highest bidder even as in Rome the imperial crown was put to those who could raise the largest fund.

I beg gentlemen to believe that whatever I may have said as to the relations of parties I do not approach the question of the reform of the civil service in any mere partisan spirit. It was because I thought I saw this danger, because I believed that it was imminent, because I believed then as I do now that it is destructive of republicanism and will end in the downfall of republican government, that I felt it my duty to devote whatever ability I had to the consideration of this subject. It was that which induced me a year or two ago to introduce a bill which after the best reflection, the best study, the best assistance that I could get I did introduce in the Senate, and which in some degree modified, has come back from the Committee on Civil Service Reform, and is now pending before this body.

The purpose of this bill is merely to secure the application of the Jeffersonian tests, fidelity, honesty, capacity. The methods are those which are known and familiar to us all in the various avocations of life—competition, comparison. Perhaps the bill is imperfect. If so, I am sure I express the wish of every member of the committee that it may be improved. There is no pride of opinion, there is no determination, if suggestions of value are made not promptly to adopt them. There is no disposition to do aught except to perfect, and in the best possible way, this bill, the sole object of which is to improve this great department of our Government.

Mr. President, it is because I believe the “spoils system” to be a great crime, because I believe it to be fraught with danger, because I believe that the highest duty of patriotism is to prevent the crime and to avoid the danger, that I advocate this or a better bill if it can be found for the improvement of the civil service.

I shall say in passing that I find it no objection to this bill at all that while I believe it is of great value to the country in all its aspects, I do not believe it will bring disaster to the Democratic party. There has been great misapprehension as to the methods and the scope of the bill. I desire the attention of the Senators while I briefly state them. I see I have spoken a good deal longer than I intended. The bill simply applies to the Executive Departments of the Government here in Washington and to those offices throughout the country, post-offices and custom-houses, which employ more than fifty persons. I am told, and I am sure that I am not far out of the way, if I am not exactly accurate, that the number of such offices does not exceed thirty or perhaps thirty-five, and that the number of persons who are employed in them, together with those in the Departments here, will not exceed 10,000.

I said that this was a tentative effort; that it was intended to be an experiment, and it is because it is tentative, because it is intended to be an experiment, that the committee thought it advisable in its initial stages to limit it, as they have limited it, in the bill. The bill does not apply to elective officers, of course, nor to officers appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, nor to the military, nor to the naval, nor to the judicial establishment. It applies simply now to those officials who are employed in the Departments here and in the large offices of the Government elsewhere, first, because as an experiment it was thought that it gave scope enough to test its value and labor enough to employ all those who are engaged in putting it in operation until its merits shall be fairly tried and it shall commend itself either to the approval or condemnation of the American people.

There was another reason. The heads of offices and bureaus, where the number of employès is small, can themselves personally judge of the fitness of persons who are applicants for appointment, knowing as they do more or less in their narrow communities their antecedents, their habits, and their modes of life.

The bill does not touch the question of tenure of office or of removal from office. 3258I see it stated by those who do not know that it provides for a seven years’ tenure of office. There is nothing like it in the bill. I see it stated that it provides against removals from office. There is nothing like it in the bill. Whether or not it would be advisable to fix the tenure of office, whether or not it would be advisable to limit removals are questions about which men will differ; but the bill as it is and as we invoke the judgment of the Senate upon it contains no provisions either as to tenure of office or removals from office. It leaves those questions exactly where the law now finds them. It concerns itself only with admission to the public service; it concerns itself only with discovering in certain proper ways or in certain ways—gentlemen may differ as to whether they are proper or not—the fitness of the persons who shall be appointed. It takes cognizance of the fact that it is impossible for the head of a Department or a large office personally to know all the applicants, and therefore it provides a method by which, when a vacancy occurs by death, by resignation, by the unlimited power of removal, a suitable person may be designated to fill the vacancy. It says in effect that when a vacancy occurs in the civil service everybody who desires entrance shall have the right to apply. Everybody, humble, poor, without patronage, without influence, whatever may be his condition in life, shall have the right to go before the parties charged with an examination of his fitness and there be subjected to the test of open, regulated, fair, impartial examination.

Mr. Maxey. If it is agreeable I should like to interrupt the Senator to ask a question upon that point. In the plan suggested for examination as to fitness is it to be a competitive examination by the bill? I ask the Senator if the committee has fallen upon any plan as to the line of inquiry that should be instituted in that examination, and if so will he indicate it? That I think is an important consideration.

Mr. Pendleton. I am glad that the Senator has asked that question, for it gives me an opportunity of saying to him and to the Senate that if they will examine the report made by the committee, they will find that this system is not entirely new, but that to a very large extent in certain offices in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Boston it has been put into practical operation under the heads of the offices there, and that they have devised, with the assistance of the commission originally appointed by General Grant, but largely upon their own motion, a system which I suppose would, to some extent, be followed under this bill.

Mr. Maxey. What I desire to know is whether the committee, after examining the various lines of questions asked in the competitive examinations, have themselves fallen upon any plan which they could recommend to the Senate as a proper plan for examination?

Mr. Pendleton. No; the committee have not carried their investigations to that point for the simple reason that it would be impracticable for a committee of the Senate charged with the examination of the general subject to look into the proper examinations as to every Department of the Government and every department in that Department. For instance, for a letter-carrier one series of examinations might be very proper, for an assayer another system of examination, for an accountant still other examinations, for a weigher and gauger still another. The examinations must be adapted to the particular offices which it is sought to fill, and that can only be by the leisurely and competent investigation of gentlemen who are charged as an official duty with the determination of what the needs of all the Departments and offices require.

Mr. Maxey. That may be quite a reasonable view of the case; but some of the questions which I have seen submitted I am of the opinion have nothing whatever to do with the examination for a mere clerkship, but would have something to do perhaps with an examination in a college or something of that sort.

Mr. Pendleton. The examinations are to be regulated in relation to the particular offices to be filled. I am not the advocate of any special system of questions which has been devised. I am not the apologist for any error which may have been committed. I am not prepared to say that I have seen any of these series of questions which might not admit of improvement.

Mr. Maxey. I will state to the Senator that the suggestion he has himself made is about the best that I have heard. A great many of the questions which have been submitted I think are nonsensical to be put to an applicant for a minor clerkship.

Mr. Pendleton. I shall offer some amendments in behalf of the committee and in behalf of myself before we reach a vote. The details of the bill are these: The preamble expresses fully the philosophy of the bill. Read it carefully. It sets forth what common justice demands for the citizen and for the Government. It sets forth what the economy, efficiency, and integrity of the public service demand.

Whereas common justice requires that, so far as practicable, all citizens duly qualified shall be allowed equal opportunities, on grounds 3259of personal fitness, for securing appointments, employment, and promotion in the subordinate civil service of the United States; and

Whereas justice to the public likewise requires that the Government shall have the largest choice among those likely to answer the requirements of the public service: and

Whereas justice, as well as economy, efficiency, and integrity in the public service will be promoted by substituting open and uniform competitive examinations for the examinations heretofore held in pursuance of the statutes of 1853 and 1855.

Section 1 provides for the appointment by the President of a commission of five persons, of different political parties, of whom three shall hold no official place, and two shall be experienced in the public service.

The second section is in the following words:

Sec. 2. That it shall be the duty of said commission.

First, To devise and submit to the President for his approval and promulgation, from time to time, suitable rules, and to suggest appropriate action for making this act effective: and when so approved and promulgated it shall be the duty of all officers of the United States in the Departments and offices to which any such rules may relate to aid, in all proper ways, in carrying said rules, and any modifications thereof, into effect.

Second, And, among other things, said rules shall provide and declare, as nearly as the conditions of good administration will warrant, as follows:

First, for open, competitive examinations for testing the capacity of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified hereunder.

Second, that all the offices, places, and employments so arranged or to be arranged in classes shall be filled by selections from among those graded highest as the results of such competitive examinations.

Third, that original entrance to the public service aforesaid shall be at the lowest grade.

Fourth, that there shall be a period of probation before any absolute appointment or employment aforesaid.

Fifth, that promotions shall be from the lower grades to the higher on the basis of merit and competition.

Sixth, that no person in the public service is for that reason under any obligations to contribute to any political fund, or to render any political service, and that he will not be removed or otherwise prejudiced for refusing to do so.

Seventh, that no person in said service has any right to use his official authority or influence to coerce the political action of any person or body.

Eighth, there shall be non-competitive examinations in all proper cases before the commission, when competition may not be found practicable.

Ninth, that notice shall be given in writing to said commission of the persons selected for appointment or employment from among those who have been examined, of the rejection of any such persons after probation, and of the date thereof, and a record of the same shall be kept by said commission.

And any necessary exceptions from said nine fundamental provisions of the rules shall be set forth in connection with such rules, and the reasons therefor shall be stated in the annual reports of the commission.

Third. Said commission shall make regulations for, and have control of, such examinations, and, through its members or the examiners, it shall supervise and preserve the records of the same, and said commission shall keep minutes of its own proceedings.

Fourth. Said commission may make investigations concerning the facts, and may report upon all matters touching the enforcement and effects of said rules and regulations, and concerning the action of any examiner or board of examiners, and its own subordinates, and those in the public service, in respect to the execution of this act.

Fifth. Said commission shall make an annual report to the President, for transmission to Congress, showing its own action, the rules and regulations and the exceptions thereto in force, the practical effects thereof, and any suggestions it may approve for the more effectual accomplishment of the purposes of this act.

The third and fourth sections authorize the commission to employ a chief examiner, a secretary, and the necessary clerical force; to designate boards of examiners, to direct where examinations shall be held; and requires that suitable rooms shall be furnished for its accommodation in the public buildings in Washington and elsewhere. They require also the chief examiner to act, as far as practicable, with the examining boards, and to secure accuracy, uniformity, and justice in all their proceedings.

The fifth section defines the offenses which are calculated to defeat the just enforcement of the act, and declares the penalties.

The sixth section requires the heads of the different Departments to make a more perfect classification of clerks and employès, both in the Departments in the various offices under their charge, in conformity with the one hundred and sixty-third section of the Revised Statutes, and to extend and revise such classification at the request of the President.

The seventh section is in these words:

Sec. 7. After the expiration of four months from the passage of this act no officer or clerk shall be appointed, and no person shall be employed to enter or be promoted in either of the said classes now existing, or that may be arranged hereunder, pursuant to said rules, until he has passed an examination, or is shown to be specially exempted from such examination in conformity herewith.

But nothing herein contained shall be construed to take from those honorably discharged from the military or naval service any preference conferred by the seventeen hundred and fifty-fourth section of the Revised Statutes, nor to take from the President any authority not inconsistent with this act conferred by the seventeen hundred and fifty-third section of said 3260statutes: nor shall any officer not in the executive branch of the Government, or any person merely employed as a laborer or workman, be required to be classified hereunder; nor, unless by direction of the Senate, shall any person who has been nominated for confirmation by the Senate be required to be classified or pass an examination.

Now, Mr. President, recurring to what I have said as to scope of this bill, to the officers who are embraced in it, to the avoidance of the question of removal and tenure, I have only to say that the machinery of the bill is that the President shall call to his aid the very best assistance, with or without the concurrence of the Senate—for that is a matter about which gentlemen would differ and upon it I have no very fixed opinion—that the President shall with the concurrence of the best advice which he can obtain, form a plan, a scheme of examination free for all, open to all, which shall secure the very best talent and the very best capacity attainable for the civil offices of the Government. The method adopted in the bill is by competitive examination. That method has been imperfectly tried throughout the country. I have here the statement of the postmaster of New York who has given much attention and has had great experience in this matter. I have here his statement that the business of his office increased 150 per cent. within a certain number of years, and the expenses increased only 2 per cent.

To be specific—

Says Mr. Pearson—

while the increase in the volume of matter has been from 150 to 300 per cent. the increase in cost has only been about 2 per cent.

Mr. Graves, whose testimony I read before, has stated as the result of the efforts which were made by General Grant during the period that he was allowed any funds for the purpose of putting this scheme into operation, that the expenses of the Departments here can be reduced at least one-third.

I have heard it said that this system of examination proposes to present only a scholastic test; that it proposes only to give advantage to those who are college-bred, and have had the advantage in early life of superior education. The committee investigated that subject to some extent, and I have here the result in the city of New York. Says Mr. Burt:

Taking seven hundred and thirty-one persons examined, 60 per cent. of the appointees selected from them had been educated simply in the common schools of the country; 33⅓ per cent. had received what they call academic or highschool education; and 6½ per cent, a collegiate education. In all the statistics in regard to common school education there is one little weakness resulting from the fact that we have to throw in that class men who have had hardly any education, men who will say, “I went to school until I was 11 years old,” or “I went to school in the winter,” or something of that kind. We have to throw them in that class—

That is the class who have received a common-school education—

and it rather reduces the average standing in that category. As to the matter of age we have very thoroughly exploded that objection. There have been some young men of 21 and 22 who have come in, but the average has been above 30, and it is astonishing that it is the men above 30 who make the best time on examination, who show a facility to get through work quickly.

He goes on to say:

Yet about two-thirds of the appointees had a common-school education; had not even an academic education.

Thereupon the chairman of the committee asked:

Is it from that you get the value of the element of experience and natural force that I spoke of?

Mr. Burt. Yes, sir; it shows itself there apart from the question of elaborate education.

Of course these examinations must be proper; of course they must be regulated upon common-sense principles; of course they must be conducted to test the fitness of the men who are to be appointed to particular offices. You have tests everywhere. To-day the law requires that there shall be a test of examination in the various Departments here in Washington. They are pass examinations; they are imperfect; they are insufficient; they are not thorough. Mr. Graves himself says that the only examination in his case was that the superior in the Department looked over his shoulder while he was writing and said, “I think you will pass.” That was when he entered the service twenty-odd years ago.

If you have examinations why not have competitive examinations? If you have private pass examinations, why not have open examinations? If examinations are made in the Departments by subordinates of the Departments, why not have them made by responsible examiners amenable to the authority of the President under a system devised by the best intelligence that can be supplied?

I hear the system of competitive examination spoken of as if it were something extraordinary. Within the last fifteen years it has gotten to be a custom that I might almost say is universal that when a member of Congress has the right to appoint a cadet to West Point or to the Naval Academy he asks his constituents to compete for it. Formerly it was never done; it was looked on as the mere perquisite of a member of Congress. I 3261appointed a gentleman to West Point who graduated at the head of his class, and now is the active and vigorous spirit of the Military Academy. I appointed him simply upon my own personal examination and knowledge. It would not be done now; it could not be done now; the public sentiment is against it. The public sentiment of the district that I then represented would not permit it; but open competitive examinations are demanded, and everybody having the requisite qualifications of age and health and vigor can compete for the appointment.

Why not apply that system to the Executive Departments of this Government? What earthly reason can there be why when you desire to appoint the best and fittest man for the place that is vacant he should not subject himself to the competition of other people who desire to have that place? Of course, as I said before, this all goes upon the basis that there shall be reasonable examinations and reasonable competition.

Nor are there any aristocratical tendencies about this system, as I have heard suggested; for while it does not in any wise create an official caste it does in words and in effect, open up the possibility of the public service to the poorest and the humblest and least influential in the land.

Mr. President, I desire to say only one word further. I have spoken to-day under great disadvantage, and perhaps I may have omitted things that I shall desire in the course of this discussion to lay before the Senate.

But I desire, Mr. President, to follow out for one moment the line of thought which I indicated when I said that I believed this system would be of great advantage to the country, and that to me it was no objection, that I believed it would be of great advantage to the Democratic party. The suggestion has been made here that it might be better to lay this matter over until after another election, and that the mutations of parties might fill, under the old system, the various Departments with members of the faith to which I belong. Aye, Mr. President, but the next Presidential election may not have that result, and it will not have the result, in my honest conviction, unless we do two things: First, respond to the demands which the people make upon the Democratic party now in its condition of probation; and, second, disarm that great body of officials who as disciplined armies go forth to control the Presidential elections.

I believe, and I am only excused from making this remark because of what I have heard publicly and in private conversation upon the floor of the Senate—I believe if we argue this question upon the lower plane of mere partisan advantage we Democrats ought to support the measure. It has been said that this abandonment of the spoils system will retain in office the appointees of the Republican party. I conceal nothing; I state it in my place in Senate, and before my fellow-Senators who are of the other persuasion, I do not think it. There is no proposition to extend the term of office where it is now fixed, nor in any wise limit the constitutional power of removal from office. The proposition is simply and only that where a new appointment shall be made the element of fitness shall be decisive. Can any Democrat object to that?

How many Democrats are there in office now? How many will there ever be under the spoils system? The Republicans have possession of the Government for two years and more. How many Democrats will be put in office during that time, except on the merit system? Not one. But if this system be fairly inaugurated and administered within one year there will be fifty where now there is one.

It has been said that the abandonment of the spoils system will exclude Democrats from office when the day of our victory shall come. I do not think it. On the contrary, I believe that the adoption of this policy as our party creed will hasten the day of the victory of our party and its adoption as a law will under any administration fill many offices with Democrats. I think it will bring to our aid very many men not hitherto of our political faith who believe this reform a vital question in our politics. I think it will disarm and disorganize and neutralize the trained bands of office-holders who have wrested from us, as I have said, at least two Presidential elections. And finally, repudiating utterly, as I do, that the animating spirit of the Democratic party is the love of spoils, and that its cohesive principle is that of public plunder—repudiating, I say, that doctrine, I think the Democrats throughout this land—I know that in my own State they can—will stand the test of any examination, and in a fair field will not come out second best.

Who shall do them the discredit, who shall do this party, now numbering at least half the people of this country, the discredit to say that they can not stand the test of merit for official position and promotion with any equal number of men in any party of the country.

I have detained the Senate much too long, and yet I must add that the very best aid to any system of reforming the service is in the most rigid application of the democratic theory of the Federal Constitution 3262and Government; that its powers are all granted; that the subjects on which it can act are very limited; that it should refrain from enlarging its jurisdiction, or even exercising admitted but unnecessary powers; that it should scrupulously avoid “undue administration.” Add to this the election by the people to local Federal offices, and there will be little necessity and little room for other methods.

The Presiding Officer. The pending question is on the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] to the amendment of the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Allison].

Mr. Pendleton. The Senator from Iowa is not in his place at this moment, but gave me authority to withdraw his amendment.

The Presiding Officer. If there be no objection, it will be considered as withdrawn for the time being.

Mr. Pendleton. I now move to strike out lines 22 and 23 of section 2, as follows:

Third. That original entrance to the public service aforesaid shall be at the grade, and appointments thereto.

And to insert in lieu thereof “appointments to the public service aforesaid;” so as to read:

Appointments to the public service aforesaid in the Departments at Washington, shall be apportioned, as nearly as practicable, among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia, upon the basis of population as ascertained at the last preceding census.

This amendment has been discussed, and I do not care to detain the Senate in the further discussion of it. It opens up the public service in all its grades to competition, not only from those within but those outside of the Departments. The objections to the provision that entrance shall be at the lowest grade, and higher places shall be filled by promotions only, are so strong that I desire to perfect the bill by striking out this clause at this time. At the proper time I shall move to strike out the clause in relation to promotion, if it shall seem necessary to accomplish my purpose. I wish entrance to the public service to be open at all grades to every one whether he may be now in office or not.

The amendment was adopted.

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SENATE AND EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT.

Speech of Hon. John J. Ingalls, of Kansas, in the Senate of the United States, Friday, March 26, 1886.

The Senate having under consideration the resolutions reported by Mr. Edmunds from the Committee on the Judiciary, relative to the refusal of the Attorney-General to furnish copies of certain papers—

Mr. Ingalls said:

Mr. President: Contemporaneous construction of the Constitution, fortified by long usage and acquiescence, undisturbed for more than seventy-five years, has to my mind incontestably and impregnably established two fundamental propositions: first, that under the Constitution of the United States the power to appoint includes the power to remove, and that both these powers are vested in the President of the United States, subject only to the power of the Senate to negative in cases of appointment; and, second, that where the tenure of an office is not fixed by the Constitution it is held at the pleasure of the Executive.

I therefore take up this argument where the opposition leave it: I begin where they close. I concede all that they demand as to the constitutional power of the Executive upon the subject of appointments to office. If it shall appear that the report of the Committee on the Judiciary is inconsistent with these declarations, that the report and the resolutions to which we are now asked to give our assent in any manner impair or infringe upon, or are in derogation of these admitted high executive prerogatives, then I shall submit to condemnation, for my signature is appended to that report.

So far as I have been able to unravel and disentangle the complicated array of argument by which it has been attempted to destroy the force and effect of the report of the Committee on the Judiciary, I understand that the objections are practically four:

First, that by the action of the majority of the Senate an attempt is made to invade the prerogative of the president by demanding his reasons for the suspensions from office that he has made. To that I interpose upon the threshold and in the 3263vestibule of this argument an absolute contradiction and denial.

The President of the United States in the message that he voluntarily, of his own motion, sent down to this body, starts out with an absolutely unfounded imputation upon the position of the majority. He says that the Senate has been from time to time, in various ways, through committees of the body and by personal importunity, appealing to the Executive to give his reasons for the suspension of officials that have been reported to this body with the designation of others to fill the places thus to be rendered vacant.

Sir, I deny it, and I now challenge from any supporter or adherent of the administration the exhibition of a word, or syllable, or justifiable inference upon which that allegation, so often repeated with so much variety of iteration, can be properly or justly founded.

The effort has been ingeniously made to shift the issue, to darken council by words without wisdom, and to make it appear that there has been a deliberate purpose and intention on the part of the Senate to interfere with the recognized prerogatives of the Executive by demanding his reasons for suspension; and unless I hear some Senator while this debate is now proceeding and while I invite the statement—unless I hear something said in support of that averment, which I deny, and which I affirm has been made for the purpose of clouding this controversy in popular estimation, I shall assume that my denial is not to be met.

Again, sir, it has been alleged in debate, in the public press, by intimation and declaration, and it has been the basis of many studied arguments in this Chamber that there had been demands by the Senate upon the executive for private papers in the cases sent down for consideration. I deny it. I contradict that statement by an appeal to the record; and before that great tribunal by whom this issue is to be tried and determined, I allege that that averment is without foundation. There has never been in form or in substance, directly or indirectly, expressly or remotely, any demand made by any committee of this body upon the Executive or upon the head of any Department for the production of private papers; and I shall be glad in the front of my explicit denial and contradiction if some one of the advocates, some one of the champions of the administration, will point out, before this controversy is concluded, when, where, and how there has been any demand made by the Senate upon the President of the United States or upon any head of a Department for the production of private papers.

That issue was brought in here by the administration. It is said that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. We have been told of those who “fear in every bush an officer.” Sir, it was the interior consciousness of the administration out of which was evolved this phantasy, this farcical allegation, that there was an attempt on the part of the Senate to compel the production of private unofficial papers and communications in the possession of the President of the United States. No Senator doubts that the President occupies an absolutely independent position, and none would desire under any circumstances to interfere with his admitted prerogatives.

I shall strip this controversy of its fallacious incidents. I shall clear away the undergrowth of misrepresentation, sophistry, and false pretenses, that has hitherto obstructed the pathway of our consideration of the real issues that are involved in this contention. With my consent it shall not hereafter be averred before the popular tribunal that is ultimately to decide this question that there has been an indefensible and insolent attempt to impair the constitutional prerogatives of the President of the United States.

Another allegation has been that while this controversy has proceeded the Senate has been inactive, interposing partisan objections to the transaction of executive business, to prevent the execution of his high trusts by the President of the United States. I yesterday had compiled from the records of the executive office, for the purpose of showing what has been done in this particular, a statement, public under our rules, which shows that from the 25th of January, 1886, to the date of the last executive session there had been confirmed by the Senate four hundred and ninety-three nominations of officers sent down by the President. Never in any single instance where there has been a vacancy, occurring by resignation, expiration of term or proper removal upon which we could properly act, has there been an instant of delay. The Senate has not inquired whether the nominee was a Democrat or Republican, but has proceeded vigorously, industriously and steadfastly in the performance of its constitutional duties, and if there has been inaction or non-action upon nominations, I shall show before I conclude my remarks that it has been invited by the administration.

Again, it has been alleged that the action of the majority of the Senate is instigated by the purpose of keeping Republicans in office; that we are moved by partisan considerations to thwart by all means in our power the efforts of the Executive to transfer the official patronage of the Government to the party that was placed in power by the votes of a majority of the people. I am not authorized to speak for others, but for myself and for those who 3264have accredited me here, I cannot submit with patience to such an intolerable accusation.

Mr. President, the Republicans of Kansas are Republicans. They are neither afraid to be so classified nor ashamed to be thus described. They do not covet any qualifying or palliative epithets. Their attitude is neither apologetic nor defensive. They have an unconquerable pride in their political achievements, in the history they have made, in the triumphs they have won. For twenty-five years they have stood upon the skirmish line, neither asking nor giving quarter. They are Republicans not by inheritance, not by tradition, not by accident, but from conviction; and they are as steadfast in defeat as in victory. They are partisans, intrepid, undaunted, uncompromising, and they can give reasons for the faith that is in them.