Civil Service Reform 187 



session of the 53d Congress, when Senators Morgan 

 and Lodge introduced bills to reform the consular 

 service. They were referred to Senator Morgan's 

 Committee on Foreign Affairs, and were favorably 

 reported. Senator Lodge made a vigorous fight for 

 them in the Senate, but he received little support, 

 and was defeated, Senator Gorman leading the oppo- 

 sition. 



On the other hand, efforts to repeal the law, or to 

 destroy it by new legislation, have uniformly been 

 failures, and have rarely gone beyond committee. 

 Occasionally, in an appropriation bill or some other 

 measure, an amendment will be slipped through, add- 

 ing forty or fifty employees to the classified service, 

 or providing that the law shall not apply to them; 

 but nothing important has ever been done in this 

 way. But once has there been a resolute attack 

 made on the law by legislation. This was in the 

 53d Congress, when Mr. Bynum, of Indiana, intro- 

 duced in the House, and Mr. Vilas, of Wisconsin, 

 pushed in the Senate, a bill to reinstate the Demo- 

 cratic railway mail clerks, turned out before the 

 classification of the railway mail service in the early 

 days of Mr. Harrison's Administration. 



The classification of the railway mail service was 

 ordered by President Cleveland less than two months 

 before the expiration of his first term of office as 

 President. It was impossible for the Commission to 

 prepare and hold the necessary examinations and es- 

 tablish eligible registers prior to May I, 1889. Presi- 

 dent Harrison had been inaugurated on March 4th, 



