Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/165

Rh fluence for patronage, and the lack of resisting power among appointing officers to stand firm against that pressure. Take away that one difficulty, and all your troubles about needed “extraordinary qualifications” that cannot be demonstrated by examination, and about “fiduciary positions,” and about distances making the application of the merit system impracticable, and so on, will at once vanish into nothing. And it is the most baneful feature of the President's order of May 29th that it so seriously increases that difficulty by strengthening the belief of the spoils hunters and patronage-mongers that neither the pledge of a great party to “enforce the civil service law honestly and thoroughly, and to extend it wherever practicable,” nor a President's solemn promise that there shall be “no backward step,” will hold out against the pressure of political influence if that pressure be only persevering and defiant.

You must pardon me for once more referring to my personal experience. Having served six years in the United States Senate, where, at the beginning at least—I was soon cured—I thought I had to do some patronage business myself, and where I learned pretty thoroughly how that business is usually done by Members of Congress—and having been four years at the head of a great Government Department where I learned still more, and having been for seventeen years a more or less active member of an association considering it its especial duty to study the means by which the merit system may be established, perfected, sustained and extended, and also the means by which its enemies seek to demoralize, to cripple and finally to destroy it, I may, perhaps, without undue assumption pretend to some practical knowledge of the subject. And that knowledge fully warrants me in saying that if I were in a position of power and desired to undermine the merit system in the public service with