en that won the victory. They call that the spoils
system. All right; Tammany is for the spoils system, and when we go in
we fire every anti-Tammany man from office that can be fired under the
law. It's an elastic sort of law and you can bet it will be stretched to
the limit Of course the Republican State Civil Service Board will
stand in the way of our local Civil Service Commission all it can; but
say!--suppose we carry the State sometime, won't we fire the upstate
Board all right? Or we'll make it work in harmony with the local board,
and that means that Tammany will get everything in sight. I know that
the civil service humbug is stuck into the constitution, too, but, as
Tim Campbell said: "What's the constitution among friends?"

Say, the people's voice is smothered by the cursed civil service law;
it is the root of all evil in our government. You hear of this thing or
that thing goin' wrong in the nation, the State or the city. Look down
beneath the surface and you can trace everything wrong to civil service.
I have studied the subject and I know. The civil service humbug is
underminin' our institutions and if a halt ain't called soon this
great republic will tumble down like a Park Avenue house when they
were buildin' the subway, and on its ruins will rise another Russian
government.

This is an awful serious proposition. Free silver and the tariff and
imperialism and the Panama Canal are triflin' issues when compared to
it. We could worry along without any of these things, but civil service
is sappin' the foundation of the whole shootin' match, let me argue it
out for you. I ain't up on sillygisms, but I can give you some arguments
that nobody can answer.

First, this great and glorious country was built up by political
parties; second, parties can't hold together if their workers don't
get the offices when they win; third, if the parties go to pieces, the
government they built up must go to pieces, too; fourth, then there'll
be h---- to pay.

Could anything be clearer than that? Say, honest now; can you answer
that argument? Of course you won't deny that the government was built
up by the great parties. That's history, and you can't go back of the
returns. As to my second proposition, you can't deny that either. When
parties can't get offices, they'll bust. They ain't far from the bustin'
point now, with all this civil service business keepin' most of the good
things from them. How are you goin' to keep up