Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/323

Rh National legislators, are transformed into office-peddlers, and forget everything else in their frantic run from Department to Department, to see their local supporters and tools provided with official bread and butter, thus paying off their political debts at the public expense; how hundreds and thousands of individuals, without the least possibility of sufficient inquiry into their morals or capacity, are fairly thrust into places of responsibility in a mad hurry, merely because they have “claims” on the party, or only on a Congressman, as adroit packers of caucuses or manipulators of votes; how, then, when the Administration is going at last, men of meritorious character and conduct are arbitrarily removed because they do not belong to the dominant faction of the party, or do not dance nimbly enough to the whistle of some powerful favorite; how others, notoriously unfit, or even corrupt, are protected in their places by their “friends” in power, because they are useful political tools; how thus the civil service is transformed into avast party machinery, a standing army of political mercenaries, paid out of the Government treasury; how officers, by the insecurity of their tenure and by party taxes levied upon them, are tempted to make hay while the sun shines, in whatever way they can; how corrupt practices of the most alarming kind are not seldom anxiously covered up or “whitewashed” by men appointed as the guardians of the public interest and virtue lest the exposure injure the party and disturb the efficiency of the “machine”; how thus, now and then, corruption is placed under the protection of party spirit and influence; how, finally, the civil service as a party agency is, even during the term of an Administration, continually organized and reorganized, modeled and remodeled, at the request of Congressmen or according to the changing political exigencies of the times, to control conventions, to govern State politics, to elect this man or