Page:Carl Schurz- 1897-11-12 Letter to Gallinger.pdf/1



Sir:—After having for several weeks been occupied with things more immediately interesting, it is with much reluctance that I take up your last open letter for review. Indeed, I feel as if I owed an apology to the public for noticing it. I have been exposed to a sort of criticism, of which the following extract from the Milwaukee Sentinel, a Republican journal, is a fair specimen:

“It seems to us that Mr. Schurz would act wisely in choosing his opponents from men of his own intellectual level. When his opponent is a strong man Mr. Schurz chooses the strongest arguments that can be found. When his opponent is Senator Gallinger his argument shows a tendency to drop to the Gallinger level.”

I have this to say in justification of my conduct: To be called this or that by Mr. J. H. Gallinger as a private person, would be to me a matter of absolute unconcern. But when Senator Gallinger seeks to villify me, using the epithets he throws at my head as an argument against the civil service law, the case assumes a different aspect. Not on my own account, but in behalf of a cause which I regard as one of the highest public interest, I have then to take up the gauntlet. Nor can I, in defending that cause, afford to be fastidious as to the quality of my adversaries. I must meet them such as they are. And you need not, unless you choose, accept it as a compliment when I say that you, Senator, are a faithful representative of the opponents of civil service reform in point of intelligence as well as of veracity. In fact, I address you this time, only to expose once more and in a manner apt to bring the matter to a final issue, the unscrupulousness with which you seek to deceive your constituents by persistently telling them things about the operation of the civil service act which you well know to be untrue.

You had charged that “President Cleveland's last order which swept into the service almost 50,000 employees bears date of November 2, 1896,” and that “there is every reason to believe that the order dated November 2 was actually not written until after the result of the election of November 3 was known to the country”—thus conveying the impression that President Cleveland had so managed things as to cover with the extended civil service rules office-holders appointed by his administration, after it had become known that the Government would pass into the hands of the Republicans. It was repeatedly shown to you that President Cleveland's order extending the rules (not over 50,000 but only 31,372 places, at least 12,000 of which had already been subject to the examination system under separate departmental orders) had been issued not on November 2, 1896, but six months before, on May 6th, 1896; and further, that the order did not protect anyone from removal, the protecting order being issued not by President Cleveland, but by President McKinley. What do you answer? “That the rules governing that order were dated November 2, so that the order was not an accomplished fact until that time.” You knew perfectly well, Senator, when you made this statement that the rules, making the order effective, were dated on May 6, 1896, and printed in pamphlet form shortly after their promulgation on that date. You knew, further, that what you call the order of November 2, 1896, was really no order at all, but only a reprint of the rules issued on May 6, containing the same text with only a few changes of a purely verbal nature. I say you knew this when you made your statement to the contrary, and there could have been no mistake about it in your mind, for you had been explicitly told so in the letters of Mr. McAneny. And what does it mean when you now say: “If it can be shown that that was not so, I will cheerfully withdraw the charge,” and when you ask me to “produce the record?”  You know now and you knew all the time that what you said was false, for “the record” was as open to you as to me—nay, even more easily attainable to you, for you are a Senator, while I am only a private citizen. What must be thought of a Senator, who, being detected in a deliberate and often repeated falsehood, seeks to cover a shameful retreat by asking a private citizen for an official record open and known to him all the time?

You had charged, evidently for the purpose of making the civil service law ridiculous, that under the orders of the Civil Service Commission applicants for appointment as compositors or pressmen in the Government printing office were required to hop on one foot a distance of 12 feet, and that they had to answer the question whether they were immune to the diseases endemic or epidemic in the Southern States. It was conclusively shown to you that such tests were never applied to pressmen or compositors in the printing office, but only to positions requiring especial physical endurance or, as to the health certificate, to positions in the marine hospitals and similar branches of the service at Southern ports. You, as a Senator, certainly had at your disposal the same information that I have before me in a letter from the Chief Examiner of the United States Civil Service Commissioner reading thus: “The &lsquo;hopping test,&rsquo; commonly used by physicians to test the action of the heart, has never been required by the Commission from applicants for any position in the Government printing office. No medical certificate has been required by that branch of the public service because the Public Printer has never asked for it.” And still you have the audacity to re-affirm your false charge in saying to me in your last letter:  “I have data in my possession to show that your criticisms on what I said about the hopping test are equally fallacious.”  When you first repeated it, you