The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1920-10-20

1t Is one Of the pranks Of fate that
Chester A. Arthur, whom President
Hayes put out of the New York Gus
tom House as spokesman and a po-
litical boss, should find himself in the
White House seven months after
Hayes left it and conducting a reform
administration. 1t was the mandate
and lesson of Garfield's assassination
that we must get rid of factions and
spoils or the government itself might
next be struck down as its chief had
been. Arthur saw that this was the
logic of the tragedy which had thrust
him into the presidency and he did his
best to clean house.
The new president ventured only
once to play his favorite game of poll
tics, and he received such a corrective
rap on the knuckles that he kept his
hand out of it thenceforth. The next
year after coming to the presidency,
he interfered with the Republican
nomination for governor of New York
and dictated the choice Of a candidate.
He made a good selection, but the
people were in such a state of sensi-
tiveness that they buried the admin
istration nominee under an unpreced-
ented majority for the Democratic
candidate, Grover Cleveland.
At the same time national tidal
wave submerged the Republicans and
swept them out Of the control Of the
house. They were sadder and wiser
when the old congress reassembled
for it's closing short session. With
breathless haste they rushed through
the civil service law, which Grant,
Hayes and Arthur in turn had been
vainly recommending in their mess
ages.
The evils Of the spoils system,
which Jackson had inaugurtaed fifty
years before and which had been fos-
tered by all parties, had grown wirh
the growth of the civil service. Our
politics had degenerated into scram-
BILE for offices and the distribution of
patronage had become the principal
business of presidents, senators and
representatives.
The parceling out Of jobs weighed
as heavily on his successors as It
weighed on Lincoln, when his troubled
look one day led an anxious person
to ask him if some disaster had be-
fallen our army.
NO." the president exclaimed, "it is
not the war that is bothering me; it
is the appointment of a postmaster
for Browntown, Ind"
The race for preferment excited an
unnatural appetite for public office,
and the getting Of job was regarded
as exhilarating sport. From police
man. fireman and letter carrier to
chiefship and consulship, every place
on the payroll of city, state or nation
went by favor. Two endless process
sions were forever moving, one made
I'D of those who had been turned ont
or turned down and the other of those
who were struggling to get in.
Senators and representatives IN
Washington regularly made the morn
| ing rounds of the departments in
quest of places for a hungry crowd OF
hangers who dogged their footsteps
night and day A member no sooner
lost his seat in senate or house than
his successor pushed out his predeces-
sor's favorites and pushed in his own
"My influence is dead" poor
scrubwoman in the treasury walled to
Senator Hoar, when her backer in
congress died, leaving her face to face
with the prospect of being replaced by
some one with a live Influence The
system bred spoilsmongers instead OF
statesmen, and these delighted in
uuartering their strikers and workers
on the government, who renamed at