Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/400

376 who cared more for party politics than for the good of the service used that discretion recklessly for political or personal ends without much regard to the public good. I know that heads of departments who cared more for the public good than for party politics must have had in them the stuff that martyrs are made of, in order to resist, in the exercise of their discretionary appointing-power, that political pressure which sought to extort from them appointments obnoxious to their sense of duty, and that such martyrs never have been plenty. I know that the incompetent and dishonest persons that infested the service generally got their places by such pressure. I know that no man, however able and worthy, could get a place without the favor or influence of some powerful person, save in very exceptional cases. I know that when I was a Department chief myself, all sorts of incompetent or disreputable persons were pressed upon me for appointment with a force and persistency extremely difficult to withstand. I know that I could not remove a clerk for undutiful conduct, aye, not even for habitual drunkenness, without having a lot of Congressmen on my hands protesting against the removal, and going sometimes so far as to threaten me with obstructing the appropriations for my Department if I insisted. I know that when there were not places enough to go around, the most unjust removals were urged to make room, or the creation of new berths was imperiously demanded, and that thus the public pay-rolls were overloaded with salaries that were mere wanton waste.

I know, further, that when I took charge of the Interior Department I saw but one way to shut off that dangerous, mischievous, demoralizing pressure, to stop that incessant and exhausting struggle against dictatorial influences which constantly sought to force my discretionary power into doing things which my sense of duty to the public