Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/488

 Hayes formally proclaimed the general divorce of the administrative service from partisan politics by the celebrated order of June 22, 1877, saying that “no officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions or election campaigns,” and “no assessments for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.” That other departments were less scrupulous than the Interior Department in conforming to the President's order, created awkward situations from time to time. An internal-revenue collector or a postmaster might be found actively promoting the cause of his party or his faction while a land register or pension agent was required to abstain.

Similar results and contrasts came from the administration's policy of giving federal offices to the most prominent Southern Republicans, almost regardless of character and qualifications, who had lost positions as a result of the Democratic victories in their States. No Secretary was able to keep his department entirely free from these political pensioners. Of course Mr. Schurz opposed this policy as far as it was proper for a Secretary to oppose the President. Consequently the Interior Department almost entirely escaped the heavy burden of odium soon incurred by the administration, which was chargeable for the most part to John Sherman's methods in the Treasury Department. Such inconsistencies damaged the administration and the cause of reform, but Mr. Schurz's aims and methods were unchanged.

The failure of the stalwart Grant wing of the Republican party to retain popular confidence was due to the widespread conviction that a general house-cleaning throughout the federal service was necessary. Reformatory investigations were now instituted in nearly all the departments. The most spectacular