do not approve of, and which they hope to see cut down or thrown out. It is equally useless to suggest as a remedy for the prevailing extravagance, which he admits, a different arrangement of the appropriation bills and the exclusion from them of private claims. The rules of the House and of the Senate have not been the real cause of the disease, and a mere reform of those rules, however desirable, will not be a sufficient remedy. The true cause has been the prevalence of the spirit of small politics among our members of Congress—their eager endeavor to win cheap popularity be getting appropriations to be expended in their districts or States, whether useful or not; or to make themselves “solid” with this or that class of people by putting public money into their pockets; or to give their party control of large public expenditures which may be turned to its advantage; or to exhibit themselves as glorious patriots by providing for costly and superfluous armaments. Hence the scandals of the river and harbor bills, squandering millions for absurd schemes; hence the large sums spent for public buildings in places where they are unnecessary; hence the pension bills going far beyond the just and generous provision for our war veterans which every good citizen is in favor of, and serving more to incite fraud and to enrich scheming pension attorneys than to support worthy defenders of the country; hence the lavish appropriations for war-ships which we do not need, many of which will be rendered obsolete by new contrivances almost as soon as their construction is finished, and which eventually will call for a large increase of our naval force in officers and men, thus entailing heavy expense for the future. Such is the cause of the extravagance which President McKinley denounces as too heavy for the people to bear, and which he admonishes Congress to supplant with the “severest economy.” It is very evident that this evil cannot be remedied by a mere change of rules, ever so wise. It will require a change of spirit.
It is not improbable that the influence which worked for wastefulness before will also be potent in the present Congress. If the President means to act according to his words, the struggle will begin at once. He will find, as many of his predecessors have found, that the most difficult task of an Executive mindful of his responsibilities is not so much to baffle his opponents as to restrain his party friends. Indeed, it is by giving due heed to the criticism of the opposition and by denying unrighteous demands coming from his friends that the character of the man in power has to prove itself worthy of public confidence. This is the true test. At the threshold of his administration President McKinley may be met by a trial apt to be decisive for his whole official term. President Cleveland declined to sign three appropriation bills passed by the late Congress, because they were full of just that extravagance which President McKinley has so sharply arraigned; and a fourth failed to pass because the two Houses could not agree upon some schemes of expenditure. It is devoutly to be wished that the Republicans in Congress, moved by President McKinley's earnest appeal for economy, will expurgate those appropriation bills accordingly. But what if instead of doing so, they send the bills to him for approval substantially as the late Congress left them? If the President signs them, and thus yields to the first attack, the consequences will be easy to foretell. The jobbers in and around Congress will at once conclude that President McKinley's vigorous plea in behalf of severe economy was, after all, nothing but talk, uttered to tickle the popular ear, without any stern resolution behind it. Every schemer for local jobs, every ringster, every corruptionist, every hunter after cheap local popularity, will take heart; the rush for appropriations will increase from year to year; and as, in consequence of the first manifestation of weakness on his part, the tide of extravagance rises, the President will be less and less able to make head against it. And what will become then of that “economy which is demanded at all times, but especially in periods of depression in business and distress among the people”?
President McKinley's first acts in this respect will go far in determining the tone of his whole administration. If at its very beginning he resolutely puts his foot upon every appropriation bill providing for any unnecessary expenditure of money, and gives his party friends to understand that he may be counted upon to do so again and again as often as similar occasions arise, he will have done more to stop extravagance and to establish the “severe economy” he advocates than can possibly be accomplished by any change of the rules, or by the most impressive preaching. Just now, during the honey-moon of his Presidency, he can begin more easily than at any other time. And it is of the utmost consequence to himself as well as to the country that he should. A right start is half the race. To be sure, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth among the little band of beneficiaries. But he may depend upon it that the best men in Congress will stand by him, and every good citizen in the land, whether Republican or not, will clap his hands and say, “Well done!”
Carl Schurz.
REPUBLICANISM AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.
It is reported from Washington that certain Republican members of Congress are preparing for a grand rush against the civil service law; that they will seek, in the first place, to prevail upon President McKinley to rescind the executive order by which President Cleveland largely extended the operation of the rules; and that, having thus set the ball rolling, they expect to overthrow the whole civil service reform system without further difficulty. Rumor also has it that the Hon. Charles Henry Grosvenor, who represents the Eleventh District of Ohio, will lead the assault. This is hard to believe.
To be sure, Mr. Grosvenor has been opposed to civil service reform in the common acceptation of the word. He has frankly said so on various occasions. He has made no secret of it that he prefers, and would like to revive, the so-called spoils practices which prevailed in all departments of the government in the “good old time” before the civil service law was enacted. To judge from the vivacity of his language, his feelings on that subject are strong. And yet it cannot be that he should lead an attack upon civil service reform with intent to kill or maim. This belief is based upon the best of reasons.
Mr. Grosvenor is a Republican of Republicans. There is not the slightest flavor of mugwumpery in his composition. He would despise himself if there were. He prides himself upon being a party man, thorough and loyal in the strongest sense of the term. To him a resolution contained in the party platform is the expression of the will of the party; and the will of the party involves to him a moral obligation of a force no less binding than any of the ten commandments. He will not tolerate any deviation from it, upon penalty of excommunication. On the 26th of February last he rose in the House of Representatives and solemnly laid down the law thus: “Mr. Speaker: Important declarations in political platforms are never the result of accident, but are always the result of design. They are always born of conditions existing in the constituents of the party that gives the utterance. The Republican convention at St. Louis was a representative body of a great party in the country, and the men who went there and represented their several constituencies understood the conditions at home. They did not go to St. Louis to declare a platitude, nor to make a declaration that was not demanded by existing conditions, and that was not in consonance with the opinions of their constituents. … It was an occasion that will be a warning to a great many men in this country that they must obey party dictation and follow party standards, or cease to be members of that party.” And when, after this solemn announcement, another Republican member, perhaps of uneasy conscience, ventured to ask, “What does the gentleman mean by that?” Mr. Grosvenor sternly replied, “I mean exactly what I say.”
The declaration thus put forth by Mr. Grosvenor was general in its nature. It did not merely refer to the subject under discussion, but to all articles of the party creed; for Mr. Grosvenor is not the kind of Republican who would permit any one to pick out from a party platform one mandate that he would be pleased to obey, and another that he would feel at liberty to reject, and still claim recognition as a loyal, regular party-man. To question either the general meaning or the sincerity of so unequivocal and emphatic an utterance would be doing Mr. Grosvenor gross injustice. No doubt he “meant exactly what he said.” All that is necessary, therefore, to determine Mr. Grosvenor's attitude
