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sponsibilities which he must find extremely irksome, and which he should not be willing to bear.
Let us now turn to the brighter side of the picture. I believe I can say with perfect assurance that the public opinion of the country has never been so strongly supporting the cause of civil service reform as it is now. Among the great newspapers of the Republic, that is to say among those which have the largest circulations, and command the most influence, there are avowedly opposed to it hardly more than you can count upon the fingers of one hand. A large majority of them are advocating and sustaining it with more or less fidelity and force. Discussion on the usefulness of the merit system as it affects the administration of the public business has substantially ceased. On the whole, the spoils politician in assailing civil service reform confines himself to certain hackneyed ribaldries, and to the fierce exclamation that he and his kind must have the offices as a reward for party service. I have of late observed only one argument against the merit system, which, although not new, has recently been advanced by an adherent of the Republican boss of Pennsylvania in the tone of a wail of despairing virtue clad in a garb of politico-philosophical reasoning. It appeared in one of our journals in these words:
“The amount of jobbery and corruption which pervades all parties and all factions is enough to make a man who knows anything about it sick and skeptical concerning the future of the country. I call it horrible. I will tell you what has done more than anything else to debauch American politics. It is this civil service reform business. Before the Chinese system came in, whenever you wanted a man to work for you in politics, all you had to do was to promise to find him a place in Washington if you were successful and your party got into power. If you did not win he did not expect anything. To-day, if you are running for an office, and ask a man in town to round up the voters at the caucus for you, he stands back and asks: ‘What am I to get out of it?’ You cannot give him a place in Washington now, and if this civil service business is allowed to go on the day will come when you cannot give him anything in the line of office anywhere. The result is now that he wants money, and in plain English, you have got to hire and pay for whatever you want done.
