Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-05-28
FiUe Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
An Era of Reform.
BY JAMES MORGAN.

IN u III
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 a spokesman and q po-
litical boss, should n himself in the
White House seven months after
Hayes left it and conducting a reform
administration. 1t was the mandate
and lesson of Garfeld'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 hat 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
lonce to play his favorite game of poll
tics and he received such q corrective
Trap on the knuckles that he kept his
lhend out of it thenCeforth. The next
Iyear after coming to the Presidency,
he intertcred witn the RepubiIcan
nomination for Governor of New York
land dictated the choice of a candi-
date. He made d good selection, but
1.-THE people were III such a state of
sensit!veness that they buried the Nd
ADMINISTRATION nominee under an M
lp~recedented majority for the Demo-
cratic candidate. Grover Cleveland.
At the same time a 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 mes
sages.
The evils of the spoils system, which
jackson had ~inaugurated fifty years
before and which had been fostered by
all parties, had grown with the growth
lof the Civil Service. Our politics hao
~ldegenerated into q scramble for ofhces
and distribution of patronage had be
come the principal business of Presi
dents, Senators and Representatives.
The parceling out of jobs weighed
as heavily on his successors as l
weighed on Lincoln, when his troubled
look one day led an anxious person Il
ask him If some disaster had befalleI
our army -.
NO" the President explained. II
is not the war that is bothering me
it Is the appointment OF a postmastel
! for Browntown. Ind
The race for preferment excited al
unnatural appetite for public office
and the getting of a job was REGARDED
ar celebrating sport. From police
man, fireman and letter carrier L
lchiefship and consulship, every plac
| on the payroll or city, state or Nauol
j., went by favor. Two endless process
sions were forever moving, one mad
: lup of those who had been turned ou
ior turned down and the other OF thos
who were struggling to get In.
1 Senators and Representatives 4
washington regularly made the morn
ling rounds of the departments in ques
of places for a hungry crowd of hang
l~ers-on who logged their footstep
i, might and day. A member no soone
l lost his seat in senate OF House tina
his successor pushed out his predeces
lsor's favorites and pushed in his OWL
MY influence is dead" a poo
'scrubwoman in the Treasury walled I
: lSenator Hoar, when her hacker
lGongress died. leaving her face TO rae
: with the prospect of being replaced 3
a some one with a live Influence tn
system bred spoilsmongers instead {
y statesmen, and these delighted = ]
iouartering their strikers and worker
on the Government. who remained
: the beck and all of the Senators an
Representatives IN every fight at hon
r and were required to pay two pei cen
: lof their annual salaries to the can
d Ipaign fund of the party In power.
The Civil Service law, which WI
passed In Arthur's Administrative
J, took out of politics h departmel
q iclerkships In Washinton, blu eight
1--we per cent. OF b Federal employ
las a whole were left under the spoi
D lGystem. Nevertheless. the difficult mr.
1s5ep ha dbeen taken toward the pre-
lent compartments system. whom 9