Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/65

Rh starved for twenty years, will not be turned back as long as there is a mouthful on the table. Seventy or eighty thousand officers selected at random from that multitude of ravenous applicants will be put into places held now mostly by men of tried capacity and experience. They must be taken at random, for it is impossible to fill so large a number of places, in so short a time as the furious demand will permit, in any other way. Need I tell any sensible man what the effect upon the conduct of the public business will be? It will be the disorganization of the whole administrative machinery of the Government at one fell blow; it will be the sudden substitution of raw hands for skilled and tried public servants; the substitution of the eager desire to make out of public affairs as much as can be made in the shortest possible time, for official training, experience and sense of responsibility. It will be a removal for some time at least of those carefully devised guards which are now placed over the public money and its use; it will in one word be the sudden distribution of so many thousand places of trust, responsibility and power, now well filled, in the true sense of the word as spoils among the hosts of the victorious party.

It is useless to say that the Democratic party contains a sufficient number of men of ability and integrity to fill all those places. No doubt it does. But it is absolutely impossible for those who have the appointing power, even if they were ever so well disposed, to make careful selections for so many thousand places in a short time, especially considering the fact that usually the least worthy aspirants are among the most clamorous and the most skillful in securing the strongest political indorsements. Need I tell the taxpayers what such an experiment will cost? Suppose, after a success of the Democratic party in a Presidential election, all the offices, high and low, in