rprise 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 happen?" To which he replied, "Come
now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it's the same gang that votes in all the
primaries."

So much for most of the opposition to the reform. There was, however,
some honest and at least partially justifiable opposition both to
certain of the methods advocated by Civil Service Reformers 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 statement
contained some truth.

If men are not to be appointed by favoritism, wise or unwise, honest or
dishonest, they must be appointed in some automatic way, which generally
means by competitive examination. The easiest kind of competitive
examination is an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate
for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, typewriters,
clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an astronomical observatory,
for instance. It is utterly inappropriate for carpenters, detectives,
and mounted cattle inspectors along the Rio Grande--to instance
three types of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent
well-meaning bureaucrats from insisting on written competitive entrance
examinations. It would be quite possible to hold a very good competitive
examination for mounted cattle inspectors by means of practical tests
in brand reading and shooting with rifle and revolver, in riding
"mean" horses and in roping and throwing steers. I did my best to have
examinations of this kind instituted, but my proposal was of precisely
the type which most shocks the routine official mind, and I was never
able to get it put into practical effect.

The important point, and the point most often forgotten by zealous
Civil Service Reformers, was to remember that the routine competitive
examination was merely a means to an end. It did not always produce
ideal results. But it was normally better than a system of appointments
for spoils purposes; it sometimes worked out very well indeed; and in
most big governmental offices it not only gave satisfactory results,
but was the only system under which good results could be obtained. Fo