85
ment was so dangerously effective and discouraging—I mean the argument that, while civil service reform might be a good and desirable thing, the spoils system was so deeply imbedded in the political habits and ways of thinking of the American people that the attempt to uproot it was utterly hopeless—has, because of its evident futility, fallen into disuse and almost disappeared from people's memory. It may, therefore, be confidently asserted that civil service reform is now so firmly established as to have little to fear from the opponents who assailed it from without. If it is threatened by any dangers at all, they are dangers within.
What I mean by dangers within is that the practical administration of the merit system may be such as to nullify the objects which the system is to serve, or to forfeit the public confidence in the integrity of its conduct by admitting into it the element of arbitrary favor or partiality.
How great that danger is was strikingly exemplified by the administration of the civil service law under President McKinley. With Mr. McKinley's entrance into power in 1897, the Presidency passed from one party to another. The run for office was enormous. The President found himself exposed to a pressure to withstand which an uncommonly strong power of resistance was required. He was, no doubt, in point of principle, in favor of civil service reform, and for a considerable time he stood firm it its defence. He did it some good turns, as for instance, by the abolition of the secrecy of removals, which is gratefully remembered. But his kindly nature would not let him close his ears to the importunities of those of his political friends who were bitterly opposed to the merit system and sought to compass its destruction. I am far from saying that his administration gratified or even tried to gratify all the demands of the office-seekers of his party, for many of them vociferously clamored for nothing less than the total abolition of the merit system, or at least the competitive feature of it. But he permitted a practice of beating the civil service law, which, in its ulterior consequences, would have become equally de-
