Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/147

Rh their places, are new to the duties they have to perform, new to the requirements of the service which they have to carry on, unacquainted with the personnel they have to deal with. It would seem extremely difficult for them even to form an intelligent judgment at first of the propriety of any change to be made, however limited. Nothing, therefore, would be more urgently required than calm reflection, a quiet survey of the whole field, so as to ascertain what there is calling for transformation, and what the means are, and where and how proper material can be found, to execute it. And yet, just at that moment, when, to use a popular phrase, hardly anybody is knowing what he is about—just at that very moment the tremendous operation is to be performed of taking to pieces the whole machinery of the government and recomposing it again out of new material.

Now, sir, what is to guide the appointing power in this fearful and perplexing task? Is it personal knowledge? Impossible. They do not know the men who are applying for office; in nine hundred and ninety-nine of a thousand cases they never saw them, never heard of them. What is it then? They are required to act on recommendations, and those recommendations are put on paper. You are curious to see such a paper, and one of the aspirants, perhaps considering you an important man, will be very glad to hand it to you, maybe to obtain your signature, too, in his favor. And what do you read? The applicant for office is represented to be the model man of the age in point of character, of intelligence, of capacity and of political merit; he is just the man for such a place, and it would inflict serious damage on the country not to appoint him. You ask his neighbor, who, perhaps, is his competitor, and he will inform you that the same man who in that paper is described as the model man of the Republic is a very shabby character, and that no more