CHAPTER V 
Fighting the Spoils Hunters and Rascals 
T HE years of Roosevelt's early political life were those of the 
origin of legalized Civil Service Reform in the United States. 
It is generally recognized that the assassination of President 
Garfield was a direct outcome of the moss-grown spoils system that 
had so long prevailed. This dire event hastened the reform, and in 
1883 a Civil Service Act was passed which provided for a board of 
commissioners and for the appointment to office by examination of 
candidates. The power of appointment was in a measure taken out of 
the President's hands, the law giving the first chance for an office to 
those who best stood the test of examination. 
President Harrison, after taking his seat in 1889, appointed the 
dauntless young New York reformer on the Civil Service Commission, 
and made him chairman of that body. The President had good reason 
for this act. In 1884 Roosevelt had succeeded in securing the passage 
of a Civil Service Reform law for New York, and his work in this 
direction had made him the logical head of the difficult Federal reform. 
No better selection could have been made. Roosevelt was a man 
capable of a vast amount of work, and saw that in this new field there 
was a call for his utmost energy. The law had been widely evaded or 
ignored, the spoils system was fighting hard for its control of the 
perquisites, and only a fighter ready to hit square from the shoulder 
was fitted to enter the contest. 
The law had its loopholes, as all such laws are almost sure to have, 
and its enemies took the utmost advantage of this. The new head of 
the commission saw that he had heroic work before him, and that he 
would have bitter opposition to meet both in and out of Congress. 
But no condition of that kind ever stopped Theodore Roosevelt. While 
it may not be fair to say that he dearly loved a fight, no one can say 
that the prospect of a fight ever had any terror for him. For six years 
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