The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-10-07
A PLAYED-OUT FARCE.
exhausted.


The play of Grover Cleveland in the charac
ter of the great civil-service refornner is about
drawing to close, as we have so certainly an
tlcipated. He has been President for seven
months. He has put in Office few estimable
and reputable men, but he has also put in
such fellows as Chase, Pillsbury, Troop, Hig
gins, and scores of others in the different
States, who are known by the people of those
States to be anything but ''reformers.' In
Ind lana, for instance, he has appointed such
men as Lamb and Hanlon to offset such as
Magee and DENLY. The Civil-service Com
mission is broken up; it is as dead as last
years mackerel. A rule has been wiped out
by the executive pen that practically annuls
the examinations thus far made, and opens the
door to all the hungry horde that may appear
before the new Democratic Commission when
it shall be constituted. He has allowed Attor-
ney- general Garland to clean out his depart
general has turned his department. into
a character assassination bureau, while his
first assistant is chopping off heads
at the rate of from one to three hundred a
day. In the State of New York the Demo
cratic party slapped civilservice reform di-
rectly in the face, both in the platform and
by the nomination of notorious spokesman;
and for the ticket thus nominated upon an
anticivil- service reform platform Mr. Cleve-
lands official influence is being daily used in
the most direct and positive manner A
Washington special Of yesterday to the
Courier-J Journal, evidently inspired from the
White House, says
''The President makes no secret of his po-
sition in the campaign in New York. He tells
all of his friends that he regards the election
of Governor Hill and the Democratic State
ticket as highly important to Democratic IN
terests, and evinces the Hvelest interest in
the struggle. He confesses that the absurd
reports that he is not friendly to the election
of Governor Hill and the Democratic ticket
annoy him exceedingly, and he is at a loss
to understand why honest men editing news
papers should deliberately and knowingly
misrepresent him.
'The President is not only in favor of the
election of Governor Hill and the Democratic
ticket on party grounds, but he favors it on
honest government and business principles
for the reason that the product of thes-nsmo-
cratic State convention is of higher and
better quality than that Of the Republican
convention. In word, the President Of the
United States is an honest man and good
Democrat, and, being asuch, he earnestly de-
sires the election of the Democratic State
ticket, because it is composed of good, honest
men and Democrats AS further proof of
his sincerity, it is the present intention of the
President to go home and vote the straight
Democratic ticket"
Is it not high time to have done with all
mawkish nonsense and sentiment about Cleve-
Cleveland is, that he is big lump of very or
binary manhood, mixed with pure obstinacy
directed by his personal feelings. To-day his
obstinacy leads him in direction that appears
to be reform" to the optimistic, or to those who
must needs find some possible excuse for
their foolish course last year, and that is all
there is now, or all there has ever been, about
his so-much- vaunted civilservice reform. He
has gone so far as to write letter, by dicta-
ton, saying he is Democrat. and wants to
see the Democratic party succeed. This for
New York consumption, and to aid party
and candidate that are as hostile to civil
service reform as it is possible to be.
| Grover Cleveland is an arrant humbug
when he poses as a civil-service reformer par
excellence; his record as President demon
strates it beyond question, and his attitude
toward the New York Democratic State ticket
| further confirms it. What will such men as
George William Curtis and such papers as the
New York Times, New York Post, Springfield
Republican, Boston Herald, and tine like, say in
view of this latest revelation of the pinchbeck
out of which their tin god is made?
THE DEK-DCRATIC- PROHIBITION SIDE-SHOW.
Rev. j. w. Wakefield, pastor Of the Meth
4 H.