Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/162

138 violators.” And then that so-called “recommendation” of the Commission is paraded by the Administration as justifying the President's order of May 29th!

Consider what a precedent this will be! It teaches the spoilsmen in the public service that they need only find some pretext for rebelling against the civil service law, and that if they carry on that rebellion with sufficient boldness and persistency, they will have good ground for hoping that, for the very reason of their bold and persistent lawlessness, the Government will complacently revoke the part of the law or of the rules that displeases them. A precedent more demoralizing to the discipline of the service and subversive of the merit system can hardly be imagined.

I am not unmindful of what the Administration spokesman has said about the peculiar fiduciary relations existing between the collectors of Internal Revenue and their deputies, about the responsibility of the collectors for the acts of their subordinates, about the personal confidence which should prevail between them and so on. Now, that certain superior officers bear more or less responsibility for the conduct of their subordinates, that there are certain subordinate positions of a more confidential character than others and that therefore the superior officers must in such cases have the discretionary power to select their subordinates without being troubled by any civil service rules, is one of the well-worn stock arguments of the enemies of civil service reform. There are few positions above the lowest clerkships to which this argument may not be more or less applied, and to which the spoils politicians do not actually apply it.

Against this permit me a recital of personal experience. When, years ago, I became Secretary of the Interior, I thought it best not to take a single person with me into the Department, not even a private and