es, not to speak of State
and municipal offices. The men who fill these offices, and the men who
wish to fill them, within and without the dominant party for the time
being, make a regular army, whose interest it is that the system
of bread-and-butter politics shall continue. Against their concrete
interest we have merely the generally unorganized sentiment of the
community in favor of putting things on a decent basis. The large number
of men who believe vaguely in good are pitted against the smaller but
still larger number of men whose interest it often becomes to act
very concretely and actively for evil; and it is small wonder that the
struggle is doubtful.

During my six years' service as Commissioner the field of the merit
system was extended at the expense of the spoils system so as to include
several times the number of offices that had originally been included.
Generally this was done by the introduction of competitive entrance
examinations; sometimes, as in the Navy-Yards, by a system of
registration. This of itself was good work.

Even better work was making the law efficient and genuine where it
applied. As was inevitable in the introduction of such a system, there
was at first only partial success in its application. For instance,
it applied to the ordinary employees in the big custom-houses and
post-offices, but not to the heads of these offices. A number of the
heads of the offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade,
themselves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, directly
or indirectly, to break down the merit system and to pay their own
political debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the
positions under them. Occasionally these men acted with open and naked
brutality. Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law. The Civil
Service Reformers, on the other hand, were in most cases not much used
to practical politics, and were often well-nigh helpless when pitted
against veteran professional politicians. In consequence I found at the
beginning of my experiences that there were many offices in which the
execution of the law was a sham. This was very damaging, because it
encouraged the politicians to assault the law everywhere, and, on the
other hand, made good people feel that the law was not worth while
defending.

The first effort of myself and my colleagues was to secure the genuine
enforcement of the law. In this we succeeded after a number of lively
fights