surrounding you and feel anxious about them. When I shall have returned to journalistic work to exercise an influence [on] public opinion, nothing will delight me more than to be able to carry on the business of criticism in the way of support and approval of your endeavors and achievements.
TO JAMES A. GARFIELD
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅[1]
Permit me now a few remarks of a general character in addition to my last letter. I hear that you are troubled by the “geographical question” in connection with the formation of your Cabinet. While it may seem desirable that the members of the Cabinet should be fairly distributed in the geographical sense, this consideration appears, before the formation of the Cabinet, of far greater importance than it will after the fait accompli. When the Cabinet is announced there always is a little grumble from this or that section or State, but it will soon die out. The only thing of real importance is that every member of the Cabinet be fit for his place, no matter from what part of the country he may come. If you succeed in making a Cabinet the individual fitness of whose members is conceded, the geographical grumble will amount to nothing and never give you any trouble. But if you sacrifice fitness to the geographical consideration and a member of your Cabinet turns out a failure, the people will scarcely accept the excuse that you selected a man of questionable fitness, or rejected a better man, merely for the purpose of gratifying a particular section of the
- ↑ About Schurz's wish to appoint a Commissioner of Indian Affairs of such qualities that he would be retained by Garfield's Administration. See letter of Jan. 28, 1881.
