Year: 1876

At the great Republican mass meeting


held in Hartford on Saturday evening,


Samuel L Clemens (Mark Twain) presided,
and gave his reasons why literary, men
should leave their seclusion and work for


the Republican ticket. He said: Some
one asked me, the other day, why it was
that nearly all the people who write books
had lately come to the front and proclaim
| ed their political preference, since such a
thing had probably never ocurred before in
America, and why it was almost all of this
strange, new band of volunteers marched
under the banner of Hayes and Wheeler.
think these people have come to the front
mainly because they see at last chance to
make this government good government,


because they think they see chance to in
stitute an honest and sensible system of
civil service which shall SO amply prove it's
worth and worthiness that no succeeding
President can ever venture to put his foot
upon it. Our present civil system, born of
General Jackson and the Democratic party


is so idiotic. so contemplate, SO grotesque,
that it would make the very savages of
Dahomey jeer and the very gods Of solem-
nifty laugh. We will not hire blacksmith
who never lifted sledge. We win not
hire school teacher who does not know
the alphabet. We will not have man
about us in our business life, in any walk
of it, low or high, unless he has served an
apprenticeship and can prove that he is
capable Of doing the work he offers to do.
We even require plumber to know some
thing laughter, and a pause by the speak
er] about his business renewed laughter],
that he shall at least know which side of a
pipe is the inside. [Roars of laughter. ]
But when you come to our civil service, we
serenely7ill great numbers of our minor
public Offices with ignoramuses. We put
the vast business of a custom house in the
hands Of a fiathead who does not know
bill of lading from a transit of Venus
laughter and pause ], never having heard
of either of them before. Laughter. Un-
der a Treasury appointment we pour oceans
of money and accompanying statistics
through the hands and brain of an ignorant
villager who never before could wrestle
with two weeks wash bill without getting
thrown. [Great laughter. Under our
consular system we send creatures all over
the world who speak no language but their
own, and even when it comes to that, go
wading all their days through floods of
moods and lenses, and fourishing the
scalps of mutilated parts of speech. When
forced to it, we order home foreign am
bassador who is frescoed all over with
h-indiscreetnesses. Laughter. But
we Immediately send one in his place whose
moral ceiling has a perceptible shady tint
to it, and then he brays when we supposed
he was going to roar We carefully train
and educate our naval officers and military
men, and we ripen and perfect their capa-
bilities through long services and expert
ence, and keep hold of these excellent
servants through just system of promo
tion. This is exactly what we hope to do
with our civil service under Mr.. Hayes.
[ [Applause.l We hope and expect to sever
that service as utterly from politics as is
the naval and military service and we hope
to make it as respectable too. We hope to
make worth and capacity the sole require
ments Of the civil service, in the place of
the amount of party dirty work the candi-
dates has done. st@at# - =5-st lt5