Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/163

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1893]
Carl Schurz
139

If you stop it now, no successor of yours will ever dare to revive it.




Executive Mansion,
Washington, April 6, 1893.

This is about the way the fourth-class postmaster record stood on April 3, 1893:

Vacancies by resignation on the 4th of March—501.

Removals from the 4th of March to April 3—374.

Those removals include many for cause—probably a majority are in that category. We have been at work twenty-four days. Three hundred and seventy-four removals in that time certainly do not justify your suggestion that “the guillotine is lustily at work and that heads are falling at the rate of a hundred or a hundred and fifty a day.”

I do not claim it to be relevant, but it is a fact, that on the 4th of March, 1889, there were 500 vacancies by resignation, and that the removals between that date and April 3, 1889, numbered 849.




TO PRESIDENT CLEVELAND

“Solitude,” April 10, 1893.

Your letter of the 6th inst. is in my hands. I need not remind you that since the beginning of your great career I have been your devoted friend and that you always could count upon my cordial and active support when ever there was any call for it. What my motives and purposes were, you know best. I may have troubled you with criticism and remonstrance, but only in behalf of the public interest and your own success and honor. I say this merely to emphasize the fact that I cannot possibly wish to find fault with your Administration and that nobody can be more delighted than I am to find