REFORMER
obvious to Barker. MacVeagh was identified with the independents participating in all of their councils and was at the same time the son-in-law of Simon Cameron and, therefore, fitted both ways. I stood by Barker and sent a letter to the President in which, answering the objection of Barker's youth, I said: “Though one of our younger men, he is the senior by several years of the ablest of the treasurer's when appointed by the greatest of our presidents.” The letter failed, but the phrase struck and was repeated to several persons by Garfield.
In 1881 a Civil Service Reform Association was organized in Philadelphia with MacVeagh as president and myself as secretary. For a long time the records were kept and the meetings were held in my office, at No. 209 South Sixth Street, and their first conflict with the outside and wicked world I maintained in a series of letters with Howard M. Jenkins, afterward editor of The Friend's Intelligencer and author of a history of Gwynedd. He was a combative and able fellow, a friend of Barker, anxious for the improvement of public life, but he had no faith in Civil Service Reform. He perished by falling from a foot log over Buck Hill Falls. I was not altogether in sympathy with my associates in this work. The difference was partly fundamental. I felt that pretty much the whole merit of the system consisted in the advocacy of permanence of tenure; that is, that no one of the ministerial office-holders should be removed except for incompetence or failure in the performance in his duties, a reversal of the doctrine introduced by Andrew Jackson that to the victor belongs the spoils. They had more faith in the benefit of the preliminary examinations, which never seemed to me to be effective means of securing competent officials and which hamper those charged with responsibility. The difference was also partly political. I wanted the Republicans to make our public life better and their idea was to have these tasks accomplished by the Democrats. When, therefore, George William Curtis, who was president
