Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/161

Rh beginning of your Administrations from the standpoint of the civil service reformer. It is extremely distasteful to me to find fault. Having advocated your election and greeted you after your triumph as I have, I should be most happy to speak only in praise. But I have to tell the truth. If I am in error as to any of the facts here mentioned, I shall be grateful for being set right. And if you will instruct one of your private secretaries to inform me about appointments to high places in the Departments by way of promotion, of which I have read something in the papers, and about other things giving evidence of a reformatory spirit, you will greatly oblige me. 



&emsp; There were two principal candidates for the office of district attorney for Indiana; both were endorsed by good people. Judge Gresham knew both of them and his advice and such other information as I could gain led me to appoint Mr. Burke as rather the better qualified of the two.

It seems that he was not one of my early and earnest supporters for the Presidential nomination—a fact I knew nothing about and one which I did not think ought to influence me very much in making the nomination. Thompson, the Cleveland man, and newspapers began to howl in true Indiana fashion and I suppose gave the cue for attack. Of course the talk of conciliating Senator Voorhees or any one else is sheer newspaper twaddle which ought not for a moment to deceive any one.

Thus far I am entirely satisfied with the selection. I enclose his letter of thanks which I read for the first time this morning just after reading yours. In determining his application there was presented to me a protest from certain labor people based upon his refusal to aid, when in the legislature,