Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1883 — DEMOCRATIC PRETENSES OF REFORM. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATIC PRETENSES OF REFORM.

The Democrats of Ohio at their recent convention passed the following buncombe declaration among others equally hollow and insincere: We reaffirm the resolutions of the State Conventions of Ohio in 1880, 1811, and of the Democratic National Convention of 1872, ISiti, and 1880. demanding thorough reform and purification of the civil service, and charge that the Republican party has violated everv pledge it has heretofore given for the reform thereof, eta When the reverses of last fall over* took the Republicans, and the Bbnrbons saw a prospect of recovering pqs* session of the Federal offices from which they had been shut out sb long, they at once set up the clamor for reform to blind the eyes of voters to their real purpose. How far Western Democrats are sincere in their advocacy of it, and it should be remembered Democrats are Democrats wherever found, may be judged by the following extract from the Cincinnati Enquirer: There is a remarkable unanimity of sentiment among Democratic editors of Indiana touching civil-service reform. At a recent* meeting of these gent emeu at Logansport, where, it is said, every Democratic paper in the State was represented, there was but one editor out of th j several hundred present who favored the alleged reform. This solitary man was the edi or of the Logansport rharox. It is charitably belie vej) that a .rush of job-work has prevented him from giving the subject proper study, and his brethren express the hope tuat he will presently come over to their side and make the thing unanimous. VV hat do the reformers think of this showing:

This is a fair sample of Democratic sentiment everywhere. It is not oonttned to Indiana. It is shared by the very men who passed the Ohio resolution quoted above. They have sneered at Mr. Pendleton and his effort to reform the civil-service from the beginning, and they have no other purpose in view than to restore the Jacksonian spoils system, and all the Reform resolutions they may pass fj’om this time on will not blind the peob)e of this country to their real purpose. There may f>e changes in other policies; there may be dissensions, even divisions, on the tariff or other questions, but on civil service there can be no change. A party in one year could not so completely revolutionize the whole habit of its lifetime, even if it would.' To attempt it Kould be the destruction of the party. Civil-service, reform with the Democratic party means the removal of every Republican holding any office, however small, and the substitution of Democratic blowers aud strikers in their places. It means not only that the Democrats shall have the larger offices to which they may be elected or appointed, but that all the clerical and subordinate officials shall be swept out and their places given to bummers and scalawags as a reward for partisan services. It means that what little has been accomplished by the civil-service reform shall be uprooted and destroyed. As the New York Sun says, the slogan of the Democracy will be “turn the rascals out,,” but by the rascals it means the 75,000 minor officeholders, trained, drilled, experienced, disciplined, honest men, who are thoroughly acquainted with their duties and are giving satisfaction, whose places are to be filled with Democratic ignoramuses and bummers as a reward for their dirty work. Mr. George W. Curtis, in the current number of Harper’s Weekly, accurately measures and exposes the contemptible pretensions set forth in the Ohio platform and other pronunciamentos in the following words:

There is probably no intelligent person in the Union so wild as to assert that a Democratic administration would honestly respect the beginnings of reforms that have been already made ahd parry them forward. Whatever some Democrats might desire, the party action weuld conform to the general demand of the party. Even the Democrats who are loudest in insisting that the campaign cry shall be “reform,” are very careful to say that by reform they mean a general turning out and uprooting of the civil service. They sneer at the Reform bill and the system which it provides for introducing a genuine reform as trivial and contemptible. Their purpose is to overthrow it, and to restore the infamous spoils system complete and unchecked. The general conviction of this purpose, founded not upon the declarations of Democratic conventions, but upon experience of Democratic conduct, no platform will be able to shake, and the just apprehension of the consequences of such a causeless disturbance no sneering at at civil-service reform will allay. —Chicago Tribune,