Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/153

Rh by official recommendation to Congress or otherwise, to bring about the “extension” of the civil service law over those employments, in accordance with the pledge of the Republican platform. On the contrary, whatever intervention there was by Administration officials, went distinctly in the opposite direction.

It was under such circumstances that the President issued his civil service order of May 29th. That order withdrew from the civil service rules thousands of positions—a much larger number than preceding rumors had led us to apprehend. By extending the facilities of arbitrary transfer from lower to higher positions, by making possible, and thus encouraging, party reprisals on a great scale with each change of Administration through ex-parte reëxaminations of removals for cause without limit of time, by enlarging the power of making temporary employments permanent, and even by materially weakening the President's order of July 27, 1897, concerning removals, which at the time we praised so highly, it has opened new opportunities for circumventing the civil service law. I need not go into detail, for the matter has been well elucidated by the interesting public correspondence between the Secretary of the Treasury and Mr. McAneny, the secretary of the League, which took place some time ago, as well as by various special reports submitted at this meeting of the League.

But the significance of the President's order is not determined by the number and individual importance of the places excluded from the competitive system. It consists still more in the circumstance that the solemn pledge of the party in power “that the civil service law shall be thoroughly and honestly enforced and extended wherever practicable,” and the President's own pledge never to take a “backward step upon this question,” were distinctly broken. It consists in the fact