Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1885 — CIVIL-SERVICE “REFORM.” [ARTICLE]

CIVIL-SERVICE “REFORM.”

An Extremely Bad Beginning by (he New Administration. [Washington special.] The nomination of Gen. Black, of Illinois, to be Commissioner of Pensions is favorably received, so far as Mr. Black himself is concerned, in all quarters where he is known. Gen. Black undoubtedly will make a good Commissioner of Pensions, and will be popular with the soldiers, but his appointment is not in the line of civilservice reform. The present Commissioner of Pensions, Col. Clarke, is also a Union soldier with a good record, is a most excellent administrative officer, and, moreover, has the advantage of an experience of many years in the Pension Office, where he has risen, on his own merits from a subordinate position to the highest place. But Col. Clarke is" a Republican. Col. Clarke, moreover, could not be classified as an “offensive-partisan.” He has, in fact, taken no part in politics. He has been so absorbed in his official duties in YVashington that he has not generally gone to his legal residence to vote, and two weeks ago, when on the stand before the Pensions Investigating Committee, was not willing to swear that he had any politics. Col. Clarke manifestly, could not property come under the designation of the Cleveland letter to George William Curtis, that he is an offensive partisian. Yet so colorless a Republican as Col. Clarke has had to go. His removal is the first of the Administration. “They do not propose,” said Mr. Reed of Maine, in his savage sarcasm in commenting upon this removal, “to leave a single lamb to bite at them. The officeholders will have to go. It is right enongh, perhaps, that they should. It is the fortune of war. The only point about the matter is how much hypocrisy there is to be about it. Not a single lamb, I tell you, is to be left to bite at them."