land, was one of the evil geniuses of the Cleveland administration; his influence was potent and his recommendations were generally bad. The federal service in Baltimore was filled with spoilsmen and ward-heelers, and it is charged that even criminals found places, so that Maryland became the worst blot on the President's record as a civil service reformer.1

Cleveland complained bitterly of having been deceived by "lying and treacherous representations." For instance, after his appointment of a certain territorial judge wherein he had been influenced largely by a petition in the man's favor, he was surprised to receive a letter from one of the signers, a politician, saying that the community and especially those who had put their names to the petition had received advice of the appointment with "astonishment and regret if not pain." I signed the petition, he went on to say, "thinking it would never be considered and not for one moment believing the appointment was possible." For the man was utterly unfit for the place. A story went the rounds that the President asked the sponsor for a criminal, whom he had unwittingly appointed, "Well, do you want me to appoint another horse-thief?" 3

2

The enthusiastic approval of the civil service reformers during the first few months of the administration was

MacVeagh, Bonaparte, Codman, Allen and Potts said in their report of March 16, 1887, the Indianapolis postmaster has shown "a partisanship which unless disproved demands his removal as imperatively as that of any officer who has been removed for that reason."

1 Civil Service Record, vi. 14, 15; Civil Service Reformer, iii. 127, 132 with a reprint of the year before.

2 Grover Cleveland; Writings and Speeches. Parker, 536.

3 Anent Cleveland being deceived by his advisers see The Nation, May 14, June 4, 1885.

succeeded by criticism which Cleveland felt keenly. As early as September 1885 he showed his irritation in a letter to Eaton, in which he spoke of "the supercilious self-righteousness" of certain civil service reformers who "discredit every effort not in exact accord with their attenuated ideas, decry with carping criticism the labor of those actually in the field of reform, and, ignoring the conditions which bound and qualify every struggle for a radical improvement in the affairs of government, demand complete and immediate perfection." 1 In his annual message of December 1886 he returned to the subject again and spoke of "the misguided zeal of impracticable friends." This brought forth an emphatic letter from Carl Schurz, who had been a warm supporter of Cleveland and was now a sympathetic coadjutor of Curtis. "Until recently," he wrote, "the worst things laid to your charge were construed as mere errors of judgment. But... this confiding belief has been seriously shaken. Your attempt to please both reformers and spoilsmen has failed. I warned you more than once that your principal danger was to sit down between two chairs. [Schurz obviously meant stools. "Fall between two stools" is our common expression.] I am afraid you are virtually there now." This letter and the persistence of the two men in their opposite views caused a break in the intimate relations between Cleveland and Schurz which had existed since the year of his candidacy for President. The President's exasperation

3

1 Civil Service Record, v. 32.

2 Richardson viii. 528. "These fool friends of Civil Service Reform' as Mr. Cleveland sometimes called them." Parker's Rec., 259. 3 Reminiscences, iii. 413.

was so great that he forbade a prominent custom house official to attend the annual meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League in 1887. He afterward apologized for this order, confessing that, when he sent it, he was greatly irritated.

Doubtless reformers should hold steadfast to their highest ideals an obligation which probably justifies the criticism by Curtis and Schurz, who were broadminded men. Schurz moreover had a rather good comprehension of Western sentiment, now so important a political force. Nevertheless Cleveland had both a better knowledge and saner view of the conditions. He felt that for enduring results he must educate the people to a belief in the practicability of the reform. Like Lincoln, although in a much less degree, he understood the plain people. Living for a number of years as a young man at a hotel in Buffalo, a favorite resort for drovers and farmers, he learned from them the same lesson that Lincoln got from the loungers in the country taverns of Illinois. The history of the progress of civil service reform shows that Cleveland was right in his belief that in 1885 the doctrine was so unfamiliar to the public mind that its application must be gradual, cautious and moderate. If the whole constituency had been that which Curtis and Schurz represented, the educated and cultivated men of the country, he might well have pursued a different course. It must also be borne in mind that Cleveland was a sturdy Democrat, and felt that the education of his own party, difficult as it was under the circumstances, was necessary to sustain him in the work of reform.

James Russell Lowell, who, as he himself said, "did divine Lincoln earlier than most men of the Brahmin

caste" had now a just appreciation of Cleveland. He was our minister to England at the time of Cleveland's election and was willing to stay on, but the President naturally desired to give his place to a Democrat. On his return home he went to Washington (August 1885) and paid his respects to Cleveland, drawing forth a hearty laugh by saying, "I come to you like Saint Denis, with the head you have cut off under my arm." "Don't you think," Lowell asked at a dinner to Dorman B. Eaton (December 1885) "it would be better and make for the progress of civil service reform if equality - I mean numerical equality — could be introduced into the public service before President Cleveland's term expires? I am very strongly of that opinion. I certainly never objected to my own removal. It was certainly necessary." At the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Harvard College (November 1886) Lowell, looking directly at Cleveland, ended his oration: "Justum ac tenacem proposite virum,' who knows how to withstand the 'civium ardor prava jubentium.' He has left the helm of State to be with us here and so long as it is intrusted to his hands we are sure that, should the storm come, he will say with Seneca's pilot, 'O, Neptune you may save me if you will; but whatever happen I shall keep my rudder true."" The audience knew that "civium ardor prava jubentium" meant in this case "politicians yelling for spoils" and gave orator and President their hearty applause. It may be that Lowell had in mind the emotion Cleveland betrayed at the time of this felicitous reference when he wrote in a private letter,

1 Prose Works, vi. 180.

"To me Cleveland's personality is very simpactica, He is a truly American type of the best kind a type very dear to me, I confess." 1

Let us now sum up the progress of civil service reform under Cleveland's first administration. The Pendleton law was much strengthened and may be said to have been firmly established. While the sections of the law regarding political assessments might be easily evaded, the assessment of office-holders in Washington had wholly ceased and the practice had elsewhere largely disappeared. Through extensions as well as in the ordinary course of national growth, Cleveland left 27,380 places in the classified service against the 15,573 which he found there when he took his seat. His work in the unclassified service shows that in becoming a reformer he had not ceased to be a Democrat. In the presidential post-offices he had made practically a "clean sweep"; and, taking no account of appointments due to decease or "vacancy," he had made changes in nearly one-half of the other presidential offices. Moreover, almost all of the fourth-class post-offices had been filled by Democrats. There were likewise inconsistencies in his displacements; mistakes were made and, in some cases, injustice was done. Yet it is true, as Curtis said in his frankly critical annual address of 1887, "Under this administration much has been gained for reform." And Charles F. Adams wrote judiciously, "Upon the issue of a reformed civil service, Cleveland showed himself as much in advance of both parties as it was wise or prudent for the recognized leader of one of those parties to be." 3

1 Gilder, G. Cleveland, 3. 2 Proc. of the N. C. S. R. League, 1887. 3 The Forum, July 1892.