Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/175

Rh as its progress has been, civil service reform, having conquered only one-fourth of the service, has done only one-fourth of its work.

There are still the laborers in the Government Departments and the higher grades of the clerical force, such as the chiefs of division, to be brought under the civil service rules. These rules are to be extended to many offices in which they are not yet in operation. The quadrennial slaughter, this relic of American savageness, has to be abolished first with regard to the fourth-class postmasters, of whom there are at present about 65,000, and whose execution en masse has so frequently caused conspicuous scandal. A bill regulating the appointment, and in effect precluding the wholesale removal, of this class of public servants has already been before Congress. This or a similar measure should be pressed until it becomes a law. Meanwhile it is reasonable to ask that the spirit of civil service reform be observed in all executive appointments. Although the President, in making the so-called Presidential appointments by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, cannot under the Constitution be bound by rules restricting his power, yet he may impose rules upon himself for the government of his own conduct in the exercise of the appointing power, so as to strip the offices of the character of party spoil and to treat them as what they are really intended to be: places of trust and duty, to be administered for the benefit, not of a political party, but of the people.

I know patience is one of the most necessary and most useful of virtues, especially in the pursuit of great reforms. But this virtue should not be cultivated to the extent of disregarding and neglecting any really existing possibility. And even the soberest view of the circumstances surrounding us at present persuades that the time is fully ripe for a further and a very essential advance in the reform of the