Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/172

148 continent, in San Francisco, distinct progress has been recorded by the adoption of a city charter providing for the introduction of the merit system in the municipal service.

But the fact in which the friend of civil service reform may find the most cheering assurance of the triumph of his cause in the future, consists in the striking evidences of the growth of that cause in the favor of public opinion. The time is not far behind us when civil service reform was superciliously sniffed at as a whimsical notion of some dreamy theorists not to be taken seriously. Even when after the first attempt at the practical introduction of the merit system in the Federal service President Grant dropped it again in consequence of the refusal of Congress to make any appropriation for its support, the people generally accepted the event with cool indifference. There were indeed expressions of regret, but they came only from a comparatively small number of citizens who had become especially interested in the subject. But when, six months ago, President McKinley's order curtailing the area of the merit system appeared, the manifestations of popular disapproval were far more general and earnest than the originators of the measure had expected and than the friends of the merit system had dared to hope. Not even party spirit, usually so potent in such cases, was proof against the popular feeling of disappointment, not a few journals otherwise staunch partisans of the Administrations, giving voice to that feeling with remarkable emphasis.

The reason is simple. In President Grant's time civil service reform still appeared in this country as a new and strange scheme, running in the teeth of the political notions and habits of half a century, and clouded over by the uncertainties of a doubtful experiment. Now it is a stranger no longer. The people have made its acquain-