Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III KNIGHT ERRANT OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM How Mr. Roosevelt became Commissioner?Publicity for the merit system?Bringing up the Southern quotas?Tilts with Congress?Competitive examinations and the police. Mr. ROOSEVELT’S decision to remain a Republican after Elaine’s nomination for the presidency brought about, as we have seen, a temporary estrangement between him and a number of well-known men with whom he had worked in the past for civil-service reform. They lost no opportunity of making plain to the public the fact of the separation, and of the critical distance at which they should thenceforward scrutinize his conduct in public affairs. An insincere man might have seized such a state of armed truce as an excuse for dropping aggressive tactics in the reform propaganda, and leaving his old associates to carry this on alone as best they could; but, so far from that, he became a more determined fighter than ever, and took especial pains to show hisCIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER contempt for party lines when it came to administering the purely business branches of the governmental machine. His appointment in 1889 as Civil-Service Commissioner, though fraught with consequences of such importance to his future, was more a happy accident than anything else. When the Harrison administration began he was taking great interest in foreign affairs, and aspired to be Assistant Secretary of State. Secretary Blaine, however, had recognized in him a certain impatience of restraint which boded danger for their relations as chief and subordinate. So the assistant secretaryship was given to William F. Wharton of Massachusetts, a more discreet young man, and to Mr. Roosevelt was tendered instead a position on the Civil-Service Commission. Many of his friends were surprised at his…
