1885] Civil Service Reform 



sideration for efficiency or the public good. This 

 condition reached its worst phase in Arthur's ad- 

 ministration, when a very vigorous reform movement 

 was set up by George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, 

 Dorman B. Eaton, Dana Horton, William Dudley 

 Foulke, and others. With Foulke, a resident of Fouike 

 Richmond, Indiana, I came to have very pleasant 

 relations. We first met in 1885 when he was elected 

 to the state senate and signalized his arrival by 

 "Senate Bill Number One," an act to place the 

 Indiana Civil Service on a merit basis. This was 

 then a great innovation and failed to carry at the 

 time, although since accepted in principle through- 

 out the country. And for many years Foulke kept 

 up the fight, becoming a Federal Civil Service 

 Commissioner during Harrison's administration. 



The nomination of Garfield for the presidency in 

 1880 seemed like the dawn of a new political day, 

 for he was a man of intelligence who had stood aloof 

 from political corruption. Unfortunately after his 

 inauguration he was violently attacked by the 

 purveyors of patronage and was murdered in 1881 

 by a desperate office seeker. His last words having 

 been " Strangulatus pro Republica" with these for stain for 

 text I prepared my first political address, "The 

 Disappearance of Great Men from Public Life." 1 

 In that essay I explained that the spoils system had 

 brought the "office broker" into power, replacing 

 statesman and demagogue alike by its methods of 

 wholesale bribery at public cost. Existing political 

 conditions I described as a sort of feudal system 

 topped by a "boss," with the various minor officials 

 and recipients of favor grouped as retainers next 



1 See Chapter vi, page 132. 



C3I3 1 



