192 Civil Service Reform 



gards the secretary of the Commission. The 

 chairman of the Committee of the Whole, Mr. 

 O'Neill, of Massachusetts, sustained the point of 

 order; and not one person made any objection or 

 made any fight, and the bill was put through the 

 House with the secretary's salary reduced. 



Now the point of order was probably ill taken 

 anyhow. The existing law was and had been for 

 ten years that the salary was $2,000. But, in any 

 event, had there been a single Congressman alert 

 to the situation and willing to make a fight he could 

 have stopped the whole movement by at once mak- 

 ing a similar point of order against the President's 

 private secretary, against the First Assistant Post- 

 master-General, the Assistant Secretary of State, 

 and all the others involved. The House would of 

 course have refused to cut down the salaries of all 

 of these officials, and a resolute man, willing to in- 

 sist that they should all go or none, could have 

 saved the salary of the secretary of the Civil Service 

 Commission. There were plenty of men who would 

 have done this if it had been pointed out to them; 

 but no one did so, and Mr. Breckinridge's point of 

 order was sustained, and the salary of the secretary 

 reduced by $400. When it got over to the Senate, 

 however, the Civil Service reformers had allies 

 who needed but little coaching. In the first place, 

 the sub-committee of the Committee on Appropria- 

 tions, composed of Messrs. Teller, Cockrell, and 

 Allison, to which the Civil Service Commission 

 section of the Appropriation bill was referred, re- 



