Progress and Reform
ness to the party, rather than efficiency for public service, was made the requirement for office holding from the highest places down to the most humble. The abuses which thus crept into the government were widespread and scandalous, but no serious and efficient attempt to correct them was made until the first Grant administration and the Forty-first Congress, both of course Republican. Then a law was made empowering the President to make rules for admission to the civil service of the nation. Under that law there was appointed the first United States Civil Service Commission, consisting of George William Curtis, Alexander G. Cattell, Joseph Medill, D. A. Walker, E. B. Ellicott, Joseph H. Blackfan and David C. Cox. The keynote of the movement was that fitness for the place was to supersede political “pull.” It was reserved for a later Republican administration and Congress to develop the system fully, but this first act was an irrevocable step toward the great reform.
In 1872 the great postal reform of issuing one-cent postal cards was established; internal taxes on food were abolished together with the import duties on tea and coffee; the income tax and most of the stamp taxes were repealed; the Geneva Arbitration resulted in the award of $15,500,000 indemnity to the United States for the damage done by Confederate cruisers through British negligence or connivance; and the San Juan boundary at the extreme northwest was established in favor of the United States through international arbitration. Despite these great achievements of the Republican party for the profit and honor of the nation, however, there arose within its own ranks a certain dissatisfaction which increased to actual hostility. This
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