for electing Representatives, as is done in many States. Names of candidates for all offices, Federal, State, and local, are generally printed on the same ticket. Hence, when a ballot is cast for Representative, it is cast also for other officers, and in so far as Supervisors control that casting, they control the results of election of State and local officers. It has been seen already that supervisors, by their power to challenge voters and to pass upon their qualifications, in connection with registration and with casting of ballots, do control the casting of ballots and take away from State and local officers their power to execute State laws as to the suffrage. Therefore, according to the provisions of this bill, federal officers have a great and possibly a controlling influence upon the election of State and local officers.

It is hardly necessary to argue the question that absolutely the only constitutional right that Congress has to interfere with State elections is to provide laws to see that the fifteenth amendment be enforced, and that States make no discrimination in their elections on account of the race, color or previous condition of servitude.

(10) The same reasoning that we have just gone through with as to the election of State officers applies to the election of Presidential electors. Yet, according to Article II., Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution the States shall have entire control of such election.

(11) No more partisan system of appointing officers than is contained in this bill could be easily devised; its method is directly opposed to civil service reform principles. In the first place, the judges who, according to the bill, are to make the appointments, are nearly all Republicans, and their tenures of office are for life; they are not responsible to the people, and could be removed only by impeachment. These judges are to appoint the chief supervisors. These chief supervisors hold office on the same tenure as the judges. From the lists drawn up by the chief supervisors the judges appoint supervisors, not less than double the number needed to officiate in each precinct where supervision prevails. From these appointees the chief supervisors assign officers for duty. The term of office of a supervisor runs to sixty days after the election is held. This curious term of service would have the effect, if it were not so drawn by the framers with the intent, of shielding supervisors from any prosecution in State courts for violating State elections or making false returns as to State officers. This provision is in harmony with the plan, previously alluded to, of shielding federal election officers from punishment.

In addition to the foregoing officers, each circuit court also appoints for each State within its jurisdiction a board of canvassers of the congressional vote. Their duties are to tabulate the results which are sent to them by election officers. Their decision is binding on the Clerk of the House of Representatives in making up his roll of members, unless revoked by the court upon contest.

If we

The number of deputy marshals who may be appointed is unlimited. will recall the experiences of 1876 under the present supervisors' law, we should expect the number to be large ! "The number of special deputy marshals who may, under any provision of law, be appointed for election purposes shall be determined from time to time at conferences between the marshal and the chief supervisor of elections, and no other or greater number of special deputies shall

be appointed than the chief supervisor of election shall from time to time certify to be, in his opinion, necessary to observe the manner in which the election officers are discharging their duties to enforce the election laws of the United States and to prevent frauds and irregularities in naturalization." The United States marshals are nearly all Republicans, and we should doubtless have Republican deputies at every polling place if the bill were passed and the law put into effect.

Thus the whole system of officers, their appointments and their terms of office was shaped after most perfect and vicious methods of partisanship.

(12) In addition to all these officers referred to above, there are other United States officials who would be called on, if thought necessary, to attend the polls, and these are the most objectionable of all. In their extremities of partisanship the Republicans forgot all principles of civil liberty, and were willing to surround each polling place with federal soldiers and to have re-enacted the scenes of reconstruction days. That United States troops might be used at the polls followed as a necessity from the bill if it becomes a law. Mr. Lodge admitted this when he said of the Force bill, in his speech at Portland, Maine, in August, 1890: "It is a law of the United States and it is the duty of the President of the United States to enforce it." Mr. Brosins, a Republican member from Pennsylvania, explained this "bayonets at the polls" proposition, in the House, June 28, 1890, in even more vigorous language than Mr. Lodge. He said: "I am for the bill on the distinct ground that it is a constitutional and necessary measure-made necessary by those who fear its operations and justified by the conditions created by those who oppose its passage. And when passed I am for its enforcement, North and South, if need be, with a firmness and effectiveness. Behind the Constitution are the Army and the Navy. Every sword, every bayonet, every cannon and every dollar of the nation's wealth are pledged to the enforcement of every one of its provisions."

* * *

(13) The number of officers which this bill provides for would be enormous; 250,000 to 500,000 is a moderate estimate. These men would get their pay from the United States Treasury, and be supporters of the party in power. The expense would be great; certainly not less than $10,000,000; probably more than $20,000,000. The section providing for the expenses are numerous; in fact, it seemed an especial object of the framers of the bill to make its pay feature attractive to prospective office-holders. All these officeholders and all their expense would be additional to State officers and State expense for the same election. To people already burdened by unnecessary taxation, this feature of large expenditures does not make the bill more attractive.

VII-IS IT WISE?

(1) Would it accomplish its pretended aim?

The Republicans say the bill is directed at the frauds in the elections of the great cities of the North and of the Southern States. So far as these cities are concerned, the Republicans claim that the Supervisors Law of 1871 has been efficient. But suppose it has not been efficient there; will the bill be so? Accord. ing to their claim, the bill is only an extension of the law of 1871. If that law

was efficient, there is no need of the bill; if inefficient, an extension of it would most probably be inefficient also. So far as the Southern States are concerned, the testimony of all thinking and observing men of both parties in the South is that the bill would do more harm than good, even if it accomplished what Republicans claim it to be intended to do. The Republicans assume that all negroes are Republicans; that the Republican party holds them in an eternal political bondage. Recent Southern State elections and other evidence show that many negroes are Democrats. The Republicans say, however, that in Congressional elections negroes will surely vote the Republican ticket. It has been shown already that State, local and federal elections are so closely connected that it is impossible to divorce them; and it is a well-known feature of American political life that men who vote with a given party in town or city elections vote with it also in State and National elections. Therefore, if Republicans were to carry the Southern States in Congressional elections, their party would necessarily go into power in the States. This would mean a re-establishment of local government as it existed in the Southern States during the reconstruction period. All know how the South suffered in every way, financially, politically and socially, from the negro-" carpet-bag"-" scalawag" rule. Shall such an experience be repeated in the South? Do any American citizens want to see their Southern brothers suffer so again? Do men who are away from the South, whose capital is profitably invested there now, want their incomes from that section cut off? Inevitably whites, North and South, must suffer from such a bill, and no negro has ever shown how his race could receive any benefit from it. Ав Mr. Cleveland said, at Montgomery, Alabama, in 1897, "the South has peculiar problems which it must be left alone to solve. Experience shows that it is best to leave her to pursue her policy. The only motives which Republicans can have for bringing forward into politics the so-called 'Southern problem' is a selfish hope to profit thereby."

(2) Is it necessary in order to accomplish the pretended aim?

So far as Northern cities are concerned, according to Republican admissions, in connection with their discussion of the Supervisors Law of 1887, the bill is not necessary. So far as the South is concerned, she is solving her own problems of suffrage and ballot reform, and need only to be let alone. Already, in the border States, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri, ballot reform laws have been adopted; and in many other States they are being discussed. South Carolina and Mississippi prefer to approach the problem by reforming the qualifications for exercising the suffrage. Why break into and practically destroy these attempts. Mr. Lodge's position is consistent; he professes to favor ballot reform, and yet, in Section 37 of the bill bearing his name, it was provided that no State should change its election laws as to the election of Representatives (which meant, in practice, the entire system of election laws) after the passage of the act. Then, again, he has said, time after time, that his whole aim is to increase the publicity of Congressional elections. In September, 1890, he said: "The whole purpose of this bill may be summed up in one word, 'publicity.'" Mr. T. V. Powderly made sufficient reply to this when he said: "The publicity will intimidate as surely as though a row of bayonets circled the polling-place.

19

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

PRESIDENT HARRISON'S RECORD AND THE BROKEN PLEDGES OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

The Republican platform of 1888 was as follows:

"The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884, and continue to adhere to the Democratic party, have deserted not only the cause of honest Government, of sound finance, of freedom and purity of the ballot, but especially have they deserted the cause of reform in the civil service. We will not fail to keep our pledges because they have broken theirs or because their candidate has broken his. We therefore repeat our declaration of 1884, to wit: The reform of the civil service, auspiciously begun under a Republican administration, should be completed by the further extension of the reform system already established by law to all the grades of service to which it is applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be observed in all executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the object of existing reform legislation should be repealed, to the end that the dangers to free institutions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be wisely and effectively avoided.'"

This plank denounced the civil service reformers of 1884 who had voted for Cleveland as deserters, and declared that Mr. Cleveland had broken his promises of reform. Never before had the Republican party, or any party, made a distinct promise that they would keep their own pledges of reform-we will not fail to keep our pledges." The failure to keep these pledges then becomes a positive act of infamy for the party guilty of it. No matter what views one may have of civil service reform, the distinct pledge of any party upon this subject, if broken, is an evidence of bad faith so great that no subsequent declarations can ever be trusted. If there was anything (as McKinley said in the debate in Congress), to which the Republican party had pledged itself, more than to any other, it was to civil service reform. Let us consider in detail the promise and the performance.

EXTENSION OF THE CLASSIFIED SYSTEM.

"The reform of the civil service, auspiciously begun under a Republican administration, should be completed by the further extension of the reform system already established by law to all grades of service to which it is applicable."

This reform already established was set forth in what is known as the Pendleton bill, which was passed under a Republican administration, although Mr. Pendleton who introduced it was the Democratic Senator from Ohio. It provided for the appointment of three Civil Service Commissioners, who

should establish rules and competitive examinations for admission to the civil service, irrespective of party considerations, in which proved merit should be the standard of eligibility.

This, then, was the reform system already established by law which was to be extended to all grades of the service to which it was applicable. The only extensions of the classified service made by Mr. Harrison in pretended pursuance of the promises of the platform, were the extensions to about seven hundred teachers and superintendents in the Indian Bureau, less than 200 persons in the Fish Commission, and a few employees in the Patent Office. The entire number of such extensions is not far from one thousand.

When the Civil Service law first took affect there were about 16,000 subject to its provisions. At the close of President Cleveland's term there were, after including the railway mail service which he had incorporated, more than 30,000 men in the classified service. But there are more than 100,000 in the entire Federal Civil Service which still remain unclassified. Of this immense number President Harrison has extended the Civil Service rules to about 1,000 employees.

Secretary Tracy has, indeed, provided for a registration of laborers in the Navy Department, under a system quite similar to the classified service, although it is not embraced within the rules, or placed under control of the Civil Service Commissioners, and it would be discretionary for any subsequent Secretary of the Navy to abolish his regulations. With these trifling exceptions there has been absolutely nothing done by the present administration in performance of its promises that the reform system should be extended to all the branches of the classified service to which it is applicable.

The civil service law itself provided that it should apply to all post-offices and custom-house offices having fifty or more employees, and that it should be extended to other post-offices and custom-houses having less than fifty employees, whenever so ordered by the President. The law itself designated these custom-houses and post-offices as places to which it was applicable. It was merely a question of time and convenience when it should be applied to them. This extension was not made at first, because it was considered best to begin with the larger offices, and gradually to extend its provisions to those employing a smaller number of subordinates.

After the accession of President Harrison to office, his own Civil Service Commissioners, Messrs. Lyman, Roosevelt and Thompson, decided that such extension ought to be made. The clerical force of the office and the appropriations of Congress were sufficient to justify it. The Commissioners reported recommending its extension to post-offices having twenty-five employees or more, and afterwards, in 1891, recommended its extension to post-offices, custom-houses and internal revenue districts in which there are twenty-five or more employed, as well as to clerks in the navy yards, to the employees of the District of Columbia, to the mints and sub-treasuries, and to all free-delivery postoffices.

The law itself declared that the system was applicable to these places. They were subordinate, administrative offices, having no necessary connection with politics. Yet, during his entire term, President Harrison has utterly failed to extend it to a single post-office or custom-house having less than fifty employees,