Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/405

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
1904]
Carl Schurz
381

unimpaired—indeed, rather fortified by the prestige of President Roosevelt's friendship.

And there is the unspeakable Addicks, the would-be purchaser of the State of Delaware, whom the legendary Roosevelt would have spewed out of his mouth with such energy that all the world would have been thrilled with his loathing of the unclean thing, but now treated by the real Roosevelt with the gentleness of friendly neutrality, giving his heelers some patronage and his opponents some, so that either may pretend to have his countenance, and that President Roosevelt's apologists have hard work to prove that he is not Addicks' active ally.

And there is Postmaster-General Payne, whose only distinction in public life was that of a lobbyist and a skillful and not over-nice political pipelayer and wire-puller, whose appointment to the control of the great patronage department of the Government, which has the largest field for political dicker, would have fitted the Cabinet of a political schemer in the Presidential chair, but not the Cabinet of the legendary Roosevelt. Mr. Payne showed his true colors when he tried at the start to discredit and to whistle down the inquiry into the corruption festering in his department.

And there is Mr. J. M. Clarkson, whom the legendary Roosevelt once denounced as one of the most obnoxious of spoils politicians in office, and whom the real Roosevelt, when President, made surveyor of the port of New York, an officer having much to do with patronage.

And there is Mr. “Lou” Payn, whom Governor Roosevelt once, for good reason, thrust out of the office of State insurance commissioner, and whom Mr. Elihu Root characterized as a man who for many years had been a stench in the nostrils of the people of the State of New York, and who was recently called to the White