to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns." A month later he published the substance of this letter as a general order to Federal officeholders, "applicable to every department of the civil service."

The inevitable conflict with Congress came when Hayes started to reform the New York customhouse. Chester A. Arthur, the Collector of the Port, and Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer, were quite shamelessly using their influential Federal positions in building up the Republican machine in New York State. With Senators Conkling and Platt, they constituted the "Big Four" who ran the Empire State's politics. Cornell was also chairman of the Republican state and national committees. A committee appointed to investigate the condition of the customhouse reported that positions had for long been distributed by the Collector as rewards for partisan services, and that about 20 per cent of the men on the pay rolls were superfluous. The President intimated to Arthur and Cornell that their resignations would be acceptable, but they declined to relinquish their positions. Hayes then sent to the Senate the names of James Roosevelt and L. B. Prince to replace the tenacious officials, but under the lead of Conkling the Senate rejected the nominations by a vote of 31 to 25. Hayes, however, had no intention of abandoning the fight. On the adjournment of Congress in July, 1878, he removed Arthur and Cornell, appointing in their places, ad interim, General E. A. Merritt and Silas Burt. The issue was squarely joined. Arthur defended his conduct of the office in a letter to the public and to his chief, Secretary Sherman. Hayes was accused of undermining the power of his own party in New York at the instigation of "visionary," "irregular" Republicans like Curtis and Schurz. "The removal of Arthur and Cornell may lead to a severer test of Mr. Hayes's administration than did the removal of the troops from Louisiana and South Carolina,” said the New York Nation. However, when Congress reassembled, the Senate, in spite of Conkling's opposition, ratified the new ap

pointments by votes of 33 to 24 and 31 to 19.1 On the day after the vote Hayes wrote an open letter to General Merritt, congratulating him on his confirmation and pledging him entire confidence.

Hayes won his fight for the reform of the New York customhouse, but he did not win the Stalwarts of the party for civil-service reform. His "victims," Arthur and Cornell, were honored the next year by nominations to the high offices of vice president of the United States and governor of New York respectively. In his annual message of December 1, 1879, the President devoted several pages to a review of the history of the civil service, renewing his recommendation of an appropriation by Congress for the resumption of the work of the commission, together with "such revision and extension of the present statutes as shall secure to those in every grade of official life or public employment the protection with which a great and enlightened nation should guard those who are faithful in its service." He returned again to the subject in his final message of 1880, asking for an appropriation of $25,000 a year. But all to no avail. It took the shock to public opinion of the murder of the president of the United States by a crazed Stalwart partisan in the summer of 1881 to rouse Congress to the passage of an act for the reform of the civil service.2

1 John Sherman, whose party loyalty was never questioned, was chiefly responsible for the Senate's reversal. He appealed personally to influential friends in the Senate-Windom, Morrill, Allison-not to let "the insane hate of Conkling" thwart the efforts of the President to improve the civil service, and even threatened to resign his portfolio if the appointments were not ratified.

2 In spite of his failure to secure legislation on the subject during his term, Hayes must be regarded as the pioneer president in the movement for civilservice reform, not only for his constant urgence of the matter upon Congress and his scrupulous observance of his own recommendations but also for his faithful support of officials who were applying the reform in their own departments. "The examples of these officers," wrote Dorman B. Eaton, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, to ex-President Hayes, in January, 1883, "have been schools of political education, and an answer to misrepresentations and prejudices." A civil-service reform association was organized in New York in 1877, and in 1881 a national civil-service reform league was formed at Newport, Rhode Island.

Before President Hayes had been in office five months he was confronted with a railroad strike of unprecedented violence and destructiveness. The long period of depression following the panic of 1873 had thrown tens of thousands of men out of employment and reduced the wages of hundreds of thousands more. As the railroads had been the chief offenders in speculative overextension in the days of prosperity, so they were the first to feel the shock of the reaction. A railroad cannot close down like a factory. It must continue to run or deteriorate. In a wild rivalry for such trade as was left, the railroads engaged in a series of rate wars in 1874-1875, until they were actually carrying freight at a loss. At one time the rate on cattle from Chicago to New York was a dollar a carload, and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad testified that not one of the roads from the West to the Atlantic coast made "a farthing of profit on through freight in the first six months of 1877." To stop the losses from this cutthroat competition, the roads began to form "pools," or agreements for the division of traffic receipts according to a pro rata scheme. But the temptation to profit at a rival's expense was so strong that road after road broke these "gentlemen's agreements" in their competition for business. Failing to keep up income, the roads began to reduce outgo. If rates would not stay up, wages must come down. In July, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio announced the fourth reduction in wages since 1870 a 10 per cent cut for all the men receiving more than a dollar a day. The profits of the road, said the directors, had fallen off 50 per cent since the panic, and the freight rates had been reduced 30 per cent. The alternative which confronted the road was a general reduction in wages or the laying off of a good portion of the men.

On the day that the cut in wages was to take effect (July 16) the freight firemen and brakemen at Martinsburg, West Virginia, left their trains and forcibly prevented other men from taking their places. The strike spread rapidly, and by midnight the rioters were in control of the railroad for miles. The three volunteer companies which made up the entire militia force of the state being unable to handle the situation, the gov

ernor of West Virginia called on President Hayes, who promptly sent two hundred and fifty troops to Martinsburg. At Cumberland, Maryland, the rioting was so serious that the governor of the state was asked to send militia; but when the Fifth Regiment attempted to reach the railroad station in Baltimore, it was attacked by a mob in sympathy with the strikers and prevented from leaving the city. Whereupon the governor called upon the President for help; and Hayes, issuing the usual antirioting proclamation, dispatched a force of United States troops from New York to Baltimore under the command of General Hancock (July 20). The worst situation developed at Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Railroad had laid off many of its trainmen by the device of running "double-header" freight trains; and it was furthermore unpopular with the merchants and shippers of Pittsburgh, because, having a monopoly of transportation at that point, it discriminated against them in rates in favor of places where it met competition with other lines. Therefore, when, the strikers at Pittsburgh refused to let the double-headers pull out on July 19, they were supported not only by the crowds of unemployed but by many of the "prominent citizens" and most of the police force as well. Even the local militia, which was sent to break up the riot, fraternized with the strikers. Governor Hartranft was traveling in the Far West, and in his absence the adjutant general of Pennsylvania summoned a division of the National Guard from Philadelphia (July 20). When the Philadelphia troops arrived the next afternoon, six hundred and fifty strong, war broke out. It was Saturday, and the ranks of the rioters were swelled by thousands of miners, mill hands, and factory workers on their halfholiday. In a pitched battle fought at the 28th Street crossing ten of the strikers were killed and scores wounded. During Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, Pittsburgh was under a reign of terror. The Philadelphia troops, denounced as "bloody mercenaries," were besieged in a roundhouse, which was set on fire, and had to fight their way out through a hostile city with a loss of four killed and thirteen wounded. The governor, on his way home, telegraphed to Washington for aid; and Presi

dent Hayes issued his third proclamation of the week, ordering the dispersal of "all persons engaged in domestic violence and the obstruction of the law." Order was gradually restored in Pittsburgh, although the last of the Federal troops did not quit the city until the end of August.

The month of July, 1877, saw the railroad strike spread through fourteen states from New York to Kansas and Texas, with the destruction of $10,000,000 worth of property and the sacrifice of lives in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Reading, and Chicago. At the same time a strike of eight thousand anthracite miners in eastern Pennsylvania terrorized Luzerne County. The energetic mayor of Scranton tried to quell the disturbance in his city by a special posse of citizen police; but after the usual bloodshed he was obliged to call upon the state militia, and eventually upon General Hancock's regulars, some fifteen hundred of whom were dispatched to Scranton, Wilkesbarre, Easton, and Mauch Chunk1 before the hectic summer was over. It was a new and terrible experience for our country, which prided itself on the reign of law within its borders, to see these forces of violence let loose. And it was a sharp reminder, when the scenes of the Paris Commune could be repeated in Pittsburgh, that no land in which modern industrialism has bred a bitter class consciousness can be immune from the danger of civil strife. The disturbance of 1877, to be sure, was of brief duration. Wherever the authority of the government appeared in the presence of the regular troops, the rioting was soon quelled. But the dead bodies, the looted buildings, the wrecked locomotives, the charred cars, and the flooded mines were a horrible witness to the hour of nightmare that we had passed through. President Hayes handled the trying situation with firmness and

1 Mauch Chunk and Pottsville had been the scene, less than a month before, of the hanging of ten of the "Molly Maguires," a secret Irish society which for a dozen years had been terrorizing the counties of the anthracite region by coldblooded assassinations of unpopular bosses and superintendents. The exciting story of the running to earth of the "Mollies" by the clever detective, James McParlan, is told in all its details by J. F. Rhodes in his "History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley," chap. ii.