Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/169

Rh sneer at civil service reform, in a judicial decision, a fine illustration of that “judicial temperament” which, according to the Secretary of the Treasury, every officer exercising quasi-judicial functions must possess, and to secure which civil service examinations must be discarded and the appointing power must be left to make its choice with untrammeled freedom. I have only to add that this decision has been accepted by the Administration as final, that the persons appointed in proven violation of the civil service rules are regularly paid their salaries, that in this respect there is no trouble in the way of further illegal appointments and that Mr. Tracewell has, after this performance, not been disturbed in his important position of Comptroller where he continues to enjoy ample opportunity for giving his rare judicial temperament full play.

It is also a matter of notoriety that the levying of assessments upon persons in the Federal service has again assumed very formidable dimensions. This abuse, it is true, has to some extent existed all the while. But this year the public mind was rather seriously startled by the unusually defiant boldness with which the Republican State committee of Ohio, the President's own State, put the Federal service all over the country under contribution to its party campaign fund, instructing, with rare cynicism, the public servants how the penal clauses of the law against assessments could be circumvented. This truly remarkable proceeding went on without the slightest mark of disapproval on the part of those charged with the execution of the law, until at last the Civil Service Commission remonstrated against it, the immediate result of which remonstrance was, according to the press reports, that the Republican State committee of Ohio rushed out another call admonishing the Federal officeholders to be quick in paying up. In this way an unusually large amount of money was obtained from the public servants.