Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/489

Rh without a resort to pretty heroic measures. They will be unavoidable sometime, and they will have to be the more heroic, the longer they are delayed.

As I told you, I belong to a committee appointed by the National Civil Service Reform League to make a report upon the general condition of things. We have a local report from Maryland before us which is no more favorable than that from Indiana, and also one on the Indian service by Mr. Welsh. If I remember rightly, you said to me that some of the civil service reformers at Baltimore who had criticized the Maryland appointments were themselves prejudiced and perhaps not entirely unselfish partisans. I am not sufficiently acquainted with all of them; but several of them, and those the most pronounced, I know well, and I firmly believe them to be entirely disinterested and earnest friends of good government. And because I know them as such, I regret more keenly than I can express to see growing up among them suspicions as to the President's motives suspicions of the groundlessness of which I am convinced, but have not been able to persuade them in consequence of what they have observed in their own State.

I have suggested to my colleagues on the National League committee that before making a general report, some of them should go to Washington and have a talk with the President and some Department chiefs about the facts before us. We may have discovered some things which are new to the authorities at Washington, and they may present views calculated to put things into a new light. What do you think of this plan?

One suggestion permit me to submit to you now. You have trouble about the removal and appointment of clerks at Indian agencies. The best thing to be done, in my opinion, would be to make clerks of the same grade of pay in the Indian Office at Washington and at the Indian