Executive is the great reliance of reform. The Executive must not count upon and wait for aid from the Legislative. The civil service law was passed when the politicians of both parties in Congress were frightened by the growing power of independent movements. Now they try to undo it again. You have noticed the proviso attached by the Committee of the House to the civil service appropriation, the effect of which would be wholly to destroy the competitive system. Here the responsibility of the Executive begins again, for the Executive can, I think, prevent that proviso from passing or from taking its intended effect. Let me tell you what I would do if I had the power. I would ascertain whether the Commissioner of Pensions, whose patronage is greatly enlarged by that proviso, had been instrumental in procuring its adoption by the Committee. If found guilty of such interference, I would instantly dismiss him. But in any event I would inform him that, in case the proviso passed, he would have to make room for a man who could be counted upon to make no recommendations for appointment except after competitive examination—for competitive examinations may be held in the Department without being ordered by law, as I had them during the four years I was Secretary of the Interior.
But there I would not stop. I would in some way make it known to the politicians in Congress as well as to the officeholders concerned, that, in case of the passage of the proviso, I would have no man at the head of a Department or of any one of the great offices subject to civil service law, who could not be depended upon, from honest sympathy with the principles and ends of that law and of civil service reform generally, to select and appoint only the highest rated and best men without regard to party from the eligible lists submitted to them, however great a choice those eligible lists might offer.
