The Washington herald., 1913-07-27

Any man accustomed to dealing with
practical politics can with difficulty. keep
q straight face when he reads or listens
to some of the arguments advanced
against civil service reform. One Of
these arguments, q favorite with ma
chine politicians, takes the form of ar
appeal to party loyalty in filling minol
Offices. Why, again and again these very
same machine politicians take just as
good care Of henchmen Of the opposite
party as of those of their own party. Iu
the underworld of politics the closest
ties are sometimes those which knit to-
sether the active professional workers Of
opposite political parties. A friend of
mine in the New York Legislature-the
hero of the alpha and omega incident
once remarked to me:
when you have been in public life q
little longer, Mr.. Roosevelt, you will un-
derstand that there are no politics III
Iolitics." In the politics to which he was
referring this remark could be taken
literally.
Another illustration Of this truth was
incidentally given me, at about the same
time, by an acquaintance. q Tammany
man named Costigan, good fellow a.
cording to his lights. I had been speak
ing to him of a fight in one Of the New
York downtown districts, Democratic
district in which the Republican party
was in a hopeless minority, and. more
over, was split into the Half-Breed and
Stalwart factions.
1t had been an interesting fight in mora
than one way. For instance, the Repub-
lican party, at the general election,
polled something like $50 votes, and
yet at the primary the two factions
polled 725 all told. The sum of the
parts was thus considerably greater than
the whole. There had been other little
details that made the contest worthy of
note. The hall in which the primary
was held had been hired by the Stall
warts from conscientious gentleman.
To him the Half-Breeds applied to
know whether they could not hire the hall
away from their opponents, and offered
him substantial money advance. The
conscientious gentleman replied that his
word was as good as his bond, that he
had hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and
that 1t must be theirs. But he added
that he was willing to hire the door
way to the Half-Breeds if they paid him
the additional sum Of money they had
mentioned. The bargain was struck, and
the meeting of the hostile hosts was
spirited, when the men who had rented
the doorway sought to bar the path of
the men who had rented the hall.
1 was asking my friend Costigan about
the details of the struggle, as he seemed
thoroughly acquainted with them, and
he smiled good-naturedly over my sur
prise at there having been more votes
cast than there were members Of the
party in the whole district Said I. "Mr.
Costigan, you seem to have a great deal
of knowledge about this; how did it hap
pen?' To which he replied, Come now,
Mr.. Roosevelt, you know it's the same
gang that votes in all the primaries"
Honest Opposition.
So much for most Of the opposition to
the reform. There was. however, some
honest and at least partially justifable
opposition both to certain of the methods
advocated by civil service reforrers and
to certain of the civil service reformers
themselves. The pet shibboleths of the
opponents Of the reform were that the
system we proposed to introduce would
give rise to mere red-tape bureaucracy,
and that the reformers were pharisees.
Neither statement was true. Each state
ment contained some truth.