Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1885 — Civil and Uncivil Service. [ARTICLE]

Civil and Uncivil Service.

Valparaiso Messenger: New appointees to the postal service are subjected to petty persecutions that the government should put an immediate stop to. There are good men that have served the Government for years, who are ever ready to discharge a duty, and who in their relations with their fellow employes, of whatever political ideas, are gentlemanly, jdst and honorable; but among those who remain from former administrations, are many bigoted, envious, and unprincipled men who are without the shadow of an idea of their duty, either to the Government or to those with whom they stand in official relation. There are men now in the postal servic e who last fall swore that if Cleveland was elected he would never be allowed to be inaugurated; jnen who neglected duty to do the low work of the meanest kind of politics; men who spent their own unearned salaries as corruption money, looking to the future for a return of the means thus hazarded. There was nothing too low; no lie too contemptible; no trick too damnable for these fellows, in their zeal to defeat Grover Cleveland. There are men now in the postal service, who, with others, said if Cleveland was elected they would forthwith throw up their positions. Ye*, they still stick, and they seem to have adopted a new line of action.

There is a plot by division superintendents, carried out per instructions by those under them, to overwork new appointees; to give to the latter work which inexperienced men cannot perform. By these methods it is intended to force resignations, or where resignations cannot be forced to dismiss new men at the expiration of the six months’ trial on the ground of incompetency. The machinery of the postoffice department of the United States was employed as a monster power to continue in supremacy men whose motto was “Rule or Ruin ” The people were against them; the verdict was pronounced; they were invited to step down and out. — These men —these unfaithful servants —cannot rule. They pvould, like Samson, pulldown the pillars. Their ideas are that they have Godgiven rights; that the government had better perish than that those of other political creeds be permitted to take charge. Men with bigotry as their one motor power; men with no sense of decency nor common feelings of humanity—jKhat is It that requires them to be retained in the service of the government? Give every good man a chance, whatever his politics; but petty despots and low-browed tools relegate to the rear The administration owes it to the country and the world'that there be an immediate and thorough renovation of the postal service. President Cleveland has made a sincere endeavor to accord with the civil service law. Men who continue in position yet show themselves incapable of appreciating the broad-minded policy that has retained them, are a travesty upon civil service and a menace to reform. We have full faith in the wisdom and patriotism of the administration, and we await patiently the inauguration of the process that shall nd the government service of the cranks, in-

competents, knaves, and offensive partisans, inherited by the Democracy from Republican administrations. The declaration in the above that “Men who continue in position yet show themselves incapable of appreciating the broad-minded policy that has retained them, are a TRAVESTY UPON CIVIL SERVICE AND A menace to reform,” is intensely true, and many just such characters are holding over to-day. So secure in place do they feel, that they unstintedly grant official favors and accommodations to partisan friends and pets, and hew to the line of red tape in official business transactions with friends of the administration. Can “offensive partisanism” be more fully defined? At once, let all such “offensively partisan” officials be relegated to the rear.