Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/426

406 Cabinet minister down to the meanest postmaster, is converted into a vast political agency to secure the President's reëlection. The Attorney-General spent many weeks, if not months, thousands of miles away from his office to “fix” his State of Oregon. The Secretary of the Interior has almost become a stranger to the walls of his Department. The Secretary of the Treasury has taken the stump in North Carolina to sing the praises of his master; the Secretary of the Navy, if I am rightly informed, will soon give the cause of his chief in like manner the moral support of his guns, and the money of the Government, as we are assured on good authority, is poured like water into the contested States to effect what the eloquent urgency of Cabinet ministers cannot accomplish. I need not tell you of the business the subordinate officers of the Government are now so arduously engaged in. Woe to the unfortunate place-holder who dares to call his soul his own and to utter a doubt as to the perfections of his master! He will soon learn that men can be reformed out of office as quickly as into it.

Civil service reform! Never have worthless favorites or political agents been kept in profitable and responsible places in bolder defiance of principle and public opinion. Never has the political conscience of the officeholder been more despotically controlled. Never has the hand of the National Executive through the patronage been more insolently thrust into the business of legislation as well as the local politics of the States—of which we here in Missouri have an interesting tale to tell. Never have the officers of the Republic appointed to the service of the country more generally become the servants of a party and of a man. And when, under such circumstances, we hear of the civil service reform inaugurated by this Administration, we have a right to call it an impudent mockery of the popular understanding, a barefaced