Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/158

138 immediate upon the accession of an Administration to power, the tearing down and the reconstruction of the machinery of the government must finally be accomplished; that the engine must at last be in working order and enjoy something like stability. But you find yourself mistaken. The same system continues through all the four years of an Administration to produce the same disorder. We have the authority of ex-Secretary Cox for this. He says in his essay in the North American Review:

If a month or two were all that is wasted in this employment it would be bad enough, but the truth is, that by far the larger part of the time of the President and all the members of his Cabinet is occupied by this worse than useless drudgery during the whole term of his office, and it forms literally and absolutely the staple of their work. It is therefore no figure of speech to say that administering the Government means the distribution and redistribution of its offices, and that its diplomacy, finance, military, naval and internal administration are the minor affairs which the settled policy of the country has relegated to such odds and ends of time as may be snatched from the greater cares of office.

Will the Senator from Missouri allow me to interrupt him?

Certainly.

I understood him to say, after the correction which he made upon the interruption of my colleague—and my understanding of what he said becomes important—that there was some period in the past when three or four consecutive collectors at the port of San Francisco were defaulters. The port of San Francisco is but a little over twenty years old, and I should be glad to have the authority of the Senator for that statement if he can turn to it.