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cant of that kind. Who, then is to select from among the untold thousands of patriotic wanderers those who are to be blessed with place and pay? Why, Mr. Grosvenor tells us that the members of Congress are the fittest men to make that selection, and of those members of Congress Mr. Grosvenor is one. Their “people,” therefore, are those whom this aristocracy of influence find it convenient to favor.
Does not Mr. Grosvenor think that President McKinley, to whom those thousands came to listen, had a much more correct conception of what is really due to the people, when in his letter of acceptance he sternly rebuked those who “encourage a return to the methods of favoritism which both parties have denounced, which experience has condemned, and which the people have repeatedly disapproved?” Is he not much more just to the confidence of the people who made him President, and more conscientiously mindful of the people's rights when he firmly tells the clamorers for the “return to methods of favoritism” that, faithful to his recorded vow, he will to the utmost of his power protect the people in the enjoyment of the right freely to compete on equal terms for public employment?
I repeat, it is the aristocracy of influence on one side and the democracy of merit on the other. And I cannot too strongly impress upon the mind of everyone concerned that every public employment unnecessarily withdrawn from the domain of the democracy of merit and turned over to the aristocratic rule of influence is an encroachment on popular rights. There is constant urgency on the part of so-called practical politicians, and sometimes also from executive officers who are exposed to political pressure, for the withdrawal of this or that class of positions which are now in the classified service, from the competition rule. In hardly any case has my examination of the reasons for such a demand convinced me of the necessity of the withdrawal. In almost every instance we find the same or a similar class of offices elsewhere successfully administered under the competitive rule, and nothing can be more certain than that the withdrawals asked for would result simply in turning over the positions concerned to the abuses of patronage mongering and spoils politics. Those in power should never permit themselves to forget that when an office, the subjection of which to the competitive rule is at all practicable, is withheld from the domain
