st time an active desire to reform the civil service. Congress
had made a timid experiment in civil service reform early in the
seventies, but had soon wearied of it. Schurz announced that his
subordinates would be chosen on merit, and acted upon the announcement.

The storm broke at once upon the Secretary over the issue of the
patronage, and soon reached the President. The offices were not only
valued assets of Senators and Representatives, who held control over
their followers through them, but had come to be regarded as the cement
that held the national party organization together. In the absence of an
issue, the binding force of the offices had an enlarged importance. But
Hayes generally backed up Schurz in the fight. The Indian Bureau, in
particular, profited by the new policy. Two serious outbreaks had
recently occurred as the result of bad administration. In one, Custer
had been led to his destruction; in the other Chief Joseph and the Nez
Perces had worried the regular army through a long campaign. The
Democratic House of Representatives had in this very period been
striking at the army appropriations in order to shape Grant's Southern
policy. It had enabled Nast to draw, in one of his biting cartoons, a
picture of the savage, the Ku-Klux, and the Congressman shaking hands
over a common policy. Schurz and his Indian Commissioner foresaw the
changes needed, now that the range Indians had all been consolidated on
reserves, and took this time to reorganize the service.

Hayes refused to give over all the offices as spoils, and removed some
officials for pernicious political activity. The most important removal
was that of Chester A. Arthur, Collector of the Port of New York, whose
enraged friends, Conkling among them, became the center of the attack on
the titular head of the party. Sneering at the sincerity of the new
policy, Conkling cynically declared that "when Doctor Johnson said that
patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, he ignored the enormous
possibilities of the word reform." But because Hayes did not in every
case follow an ideal that no other President had even set, he lost the
support of the reformers who soon denounced him nearly as fiercely as
did the "Stalwarts."

Even if Hayes had been able to keep a united party behind him, his
Administration could scarcely have been marked by constructive
legislation. His party had lost control of the House of Representatives
in the election of 1874. T