Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/173

Rh tance by actual observation. They know that it is not an idle fancy, but an eminently sober and practical conception; that its aim is to remedy real evils and to produce a real good, by delivering our political life of fatally demoralizing influences, and by giving the Republic efficient, economical and honest service. They know that it pursues this aim by methods which every intelligent business man standing at the head of a large establishment and exposed to constant and promiscuous pressure for employment would adopt for himself as eminently businesslike. In one word, they know that civil service reform as embodied in the merit system is simply the application to the public service of the plainest principles of common-sense and common honesty. Even its enemies are at heart recognizing its virtues.

This has become so widely understood by people of all classes in all parts of the country, that the propagation of correct knowledge of the objects and the means of civil service reform is becoming from day to day an easier task to the advocates of the merit system. Their foremost duty is now to baffle the efforts of the opposing forces, which, seeing the futility of attacking civil service reform on its general merits, strive to cripple or pervert it in the detail of its operation. Those forces consist of the small politicians who covet the offices for their personal advantage, the political leaders who seek to control the offices as party spoil in order to hold together and increase their following, and the unsteady statesmen in power who, while professing, often not without sincerity, to be “also” in favor of civil service reform, have indeed courage enough to assert their professed principles against their party enemies, but not firmness enough to maintain them against their party friends. The combination of these forces is an old one. It is expert in its business, and it will never do to underestimate its strength.