who make their livelihood out of politics, and who frequently make their livelihood out of bad politics.  They know every little twist and turn, no matter how intricate, in the politics of their several wards, and when election day comes the ordinary citizen who has merely the interest that all good men, all decent citizens, should have in political life, finds himself as helpless before these men as if he were a solitary volunteer in the presence of a band of drilled mercenaries on a field of battle.  There are a couple of hundred thousand Federal offices, not to speak of State and municipal offices.  The men who fill these offices, and the men who wish to fill them, within and without the dominant party for the time being, make a regular army, whose interest it is that the system of bread-and-butter politics shall continue.  Against their concrete interest we have merely the generally unorganized sentiment of the community in favor of putting things on a decent basis.  The large number of men who believe vaguely in good are pitted against the smaller but still larger number of men whose interest it often becomes to act very concretely and actively for evil; and it is small wonder that the struggle is doubtful.

During my six years’ service as Commissioner the field of the merit system was extended at the expense of the spoils system so as to include several times the number of offices that had originally been included.  Generally this was done by the introduction of competitive entrance examinations; sometimes, as in the Navy-Yards, by a system of registration.  This of itself was good work.

Even better work was making the law efficient and genuine where it applied.  As was inevitable in the introduction of such a system, there was at first only partial success in its application.  For instance, it applied to the ordinary employees in the big custom-houses and post-offices, but not to the heads of these offices.  A number of the heads of the offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade, themselves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, directly or indirectly, to break down the merit system and to pay their own political debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the positions under them.  Occasionally these men acted with open and naked brutality.  Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law.  The Civil Service Reformers, on the other hand, were in most cases not much used to practical politics, and were often well-nigh helpless when pitted against veteran professional politicians.  In consequence I found at the beginning of my experiences that there were many offices in which the execution of the law was a sham.  This was very damaging, because it encouraged the politicians to assault the law everywhere, and, on the other hand, made good people feel that the law was not worth while defending.