a certain per cent of his salary for the Republican campaign fund. Officials who neglected to pay these "voluntary contributions" were "reported" to the heads of their departments for discipline. The vast public service, of two hundred thousand men, was turned into a machine to insure victory to the party in control. The practice had never before been followed up with such systematic shamelessness.1

Garfield was elected by a large electoral majority, but with only some 10,000 votes more than his opponent in the country at large. The new President found a third of his time consumed by office-seekers. They "waylaid him when he ventured from the shelter of his home, and followed him even to the doors of the church where he worshipped." Four months after his inauguration he was murdered by a crazed applicant for office.

736. Meantime, more scandal! T. W. Brady, one of the highest officials in the postal service, had conspired with a group of contractors - including a United States Senator-to cheat the government out of half a million dollars a year. On certain "star routes," the legal compensation for carrying mail had been increased enormously by secret agreements for pretended services, and then the surplus had been divided between the contractors and the officials.

When this investigation began, Brady demanded that Garfield call it off. Not gaining this favor, he published a letter written by Garfield during the campaign, showing that he (Garfield) had urged the collection of campaign funds from officials. On the other hand, President Arthur surprised the reform element by his good sense and firmness, by the cordial support he gave to Civil Service Reform, and by the faithful. ness with which he pressed the trial of the star-route thieves.

1 Such collections from officials were made an excuse by them for demanding higher salaries. As always, the people paid. The following contrast shows progress. In the recent campaign (1916) the Republican National Committee asked thousands of voters for subscriptions; but the circular closed with the injunction,-"If you are a Federal officeholder, please disregard this request."

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CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

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Those trials were spectacular. Important newspapers impudently whitewashed the criminals; and insolent boasts were made freely that no jury would convict such "high and influential men." Through technicalities and delays, the bigger criminals did all escape.

737. These events focused attention again on the need of Civil Service reform. Congress, however, remained deaf in the session of 1881-1882; and, in the congressional elections of 1882, another assessment letter to Federal officials was signed by three leading Republican statesmen. Popular indignation at these offenses made itself felt in the elections, and the next session of the chastened Congress promptly passed the Civil Service Act (January, 1883), providing that vacancies in certain classes of offices should be filled in future from applicants whose fitness had been tested by competitive examination, and that such appointments should be revoked afterward only "for cause." A Civil Service Commission, also, to oversee the workings of the law, was established. The law did not apply to heads of large offices, or to any office where the President's nomination requires confirmation by the Senate; and it was left to the President to classify from time to time the offices to be protected. President Arthur at once placed some 14,000 positions under the operation of the law.

738. For nearly twenty years, Mr. Blaine had been the idol of the Republican masses, and in 1884 he at last won the nomination for the Presidency-despite earnest opposition from a large "reform" element led by veterans like Carl Schurz, Andrew D. White, and George William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly, and by ardent young men like Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Theodore Roosevelt of New York. The reformers took their defeat in various ways. Lodge swallowed his chagrin and supported the ticket. Roosevelt went west, to begin his ranch life in Dakota. The greater number became "Mugwumps," and supported Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate.

Cleveland had attracted attention as governor of New York

[§ 739 by his stubborn honesty and his fearless attitude toward the corrupt Tammany machine. His friends jubilantly shouted the slogan, "We love him for the enemies he has made "; and he was elected as a reform President, with the civil service issue in the foreground. But the great body of Democratic politicians were secretly or actively hostile to civil service reform; and the President's position was more difficult even than Jefferson's had been three generations before. In spite of the recent law, every Federal official was still a Republican. The Democratic office seekers were ravening from their quartercentury fast; and their pressure upon the head of their party for at least a share in the public service was overwhelming. With all his unquestioned sincerity and firmness, the President gave ground before this spoils spirit far enough to drive many Mugwumps, in disgust, back to the Republicans. Still, the administration marks a notable advance for a non-partisan service. It definitely established the principle of Hayes' Civil Service order against "offensive partisanship" by officials, prevented political assessments, and doubled the "classified " list.

739. When Cleveland became President, the war tariffs were still in force. By the trend of our history, too, high protection had become associated in the thought of the North with the preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slave; and the special interests, thriving on protection, knew how to take shrewd advantage of this habit of thought among the people.

With dogged persistence, Cleveland strove to lead the Democratic party to take up tariff reduction. In message after message, he called attention to the dangerous piling up of the surplus from the needless revenue; to the consequent opportunities for extravagance and corruption in expenditure; and especially to the unjust burdens upon the poorer classes of society from tariff taxation. In December, 1887, his message was given up wholly to this one topic, denouncing the existing tariff fiercely as "vicious" and "inequitable." During the following summer, by such argument, and by a despotic use of the President's power of "patronage” (§ 572), the House was

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CLEVELAND AND THE TARIFF

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spurred into passing a reform " Mills bill," 1 placing a few important articles on the free .list and reducing the average tax from 47 per cent to 40; but this measure failed in the Republican Senate.

740. In the "educational campaign" of 1888, for the first time for almost sixty years, the tariff was the leading issue before the people. Blaine had replied to Cleveland's epoch-making message of '87 by a striking "interview," cabled from Paris, setting up protection as the desirable permanent policy. The Republican party rallied to this standard. Its platform declared for reduction of internal taxes (on whisky), in order to remove opportunity to reduce tariff income. Orators like William McKinley represented tariff reduction as "unpatriotic" and "inspired by our foreign rivals"; and even the Republicans of the Northwest, where Republican conventions in State after State had been calling for reform, were whipped into line by the plea that the tariff, if revised at all, should at least be revised "by its friends."

The debate was marked by a notable shift of ground on the part of protectionists. Clay and the earlier protectionists advocated protection for "infant industries," as a temporary policy. This argument hardly applied now that those industries had become dominating influences in the country. Greeley, in the forties and fifties, had modified it into a plea for protection to higher wages for American workingmen compared with European laborers (§ 596). This now became the general argument. It failed, however, to take account of the higher cost of living because of the tariff; nor was evidence submitted to show that the protected industries really paid higher wages in return for their tariff privileges.

741. The Republican manager, Matthew Quay, Senator from Pennsylvania, was a noted spoilsman, and had been publicly accused in Congress, without denial on his part, of having stolen $260,000 from the treasury of Pennsylvania while an

1 Roger Q. Mills of Texas was the chief author of the measure.

officer of that State. He now called on "protected" manufacturers for huge contributions to the Republican funds;1 and, according to general belief, spent money more freely than ever before in buying votes in doubtful States. One scandal, made public a little later, was long remembered. A member of the Republican National Committee wrote to political lieutenants in Indiana, on which State it was thought the election would turn, "Divide the floaters' into blocks of five, and put a trusted man with the necessary funds in charge of each five, and make him responsible that none get away and that all vote our ticket."

742. With the secret aid of the Democratic Tammany machine in New York, the Republicans elected Benjamin Harrison, though he had 100,000 fewer votes than Cleveland, The Republican platform had promised an extension of civil service reform; but for months after the victory, the spoils system was rampant. Clarkson, the Assistant Postmaster-General, earned the title of "the Headsman," by gleefully decapitating 30,000 postmasters in the first year; and, amid the applause of the Senate, Ingalls of Kansas declared, "The purification of politics is an iridescent dream; the Decalogue and the Golden Rule have no place in a political campaign." This attitude of prominent spoilsmen was rebuked, however, by the people in the Congressional elections of 1890, and President Harrison appointed to the Civil Service Commission Theodore Roosevelt of New York. This fearless young reformer at once injected new energy into the administration of the law, and rallied a fresh enthusiasm among the people to its support by his vigorous use of language. Hitherto, the spoilsmen had reviled the mild-mannered gentlemen of the Commission at will: Roosevelt gave back epithet for epithet, with interest, as when he affirmed that a great part of the political contributions extorted from reluctant officials was "retained by the jackals who collected it."

1 This and other evil features of the political campaigns of this era are presented in Blythe's striking political novel, A Western Warwick.