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structive—far more destructive than the withdrawal from the classified service of some thousands of places which he ordered.
The rules were artfully honeycombed with little loopholes through which spoils politics could slip into the classified service, almost unperceived, except to the interested party, or to the experienced watcher, and possibly unappreciated by the President; and these facilities were so largely taken advantage of that the number of those who entered the service through the door of regular competition appeared materially encroached upon by the dodgers. But more than this. Hardly anybody was ever punished or seriously held to account for ever so flagrant a breach of the civil service law, and appointing officers came to understand that they could do pretty much as they pleased, which not a few of them did, as if not civil service law had been in existence. I need not go into detail, for the facts are sufficiently well known to the members of this League, the officers of which were kept busy remonstrating and protesting, but without avail. In short, the service was sadly demoralized, and it is not too much to say that, had these practices and conditions become permanent, the merit system would eventually be ruined by them. It is not to be believed that President McKinley, who, like many others, probably favored civil service reform in a general way without having a perfectly distinct idea of its essential requirements, was clearly aware of the havoc which his inclination to accommodate his party friends was working; but certain it is that since the enactment of the civil service law the merit system never passed through a period of more insidious peril than it did during that administration which was professedly its friend.
President Roosevelt's accession to power promptly brought on a marked change for the better. Having long been a militant champion of civil service reform, he at once recognized the threatening danger, and one after another he stopped the loopholes and closed the back-doors which, under his predecessor, had been opened to the invasion of spoils politics. Not only that. By some
