CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
and politically influential results were reached by the Treasury Department, in connection with the New York custom house. A drastic reform of this institution involved the administration in a bitter conflict with Senator Conkling and his followers. Hardly less embarrassing was the hostility aroused by the reformatory procedure of Mr. Schurz in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The conduct of this office, especially in connection with the furnishing of supplies to the reservation Indians, had long been the subject of unpleasant rumors. Shortly after taking office the new Secretary appointed a commission, consisting of three experienced subordinates in the department, to examine and report fully upon the whole system in its actual working. The investigation quickly revealed conditions and practices that in some measure justified the suspicions current, though inefficiency and carelessness were more manifest than positive corruption. Accordingly the commissioner and the chief clerk of the bureau were removed and a general stiffening up of the Indian administration was instituted. The displaced officials and methods were not, however, without friends. In January, 1878, when the manner and results of the housecleaning were made public, the Secretary became the object of severe criticism. No less a personage than General Sherman testified publicly to the efficiency of the ex-commissioner. And a certain academic statesman of very brief experience, subsequently president of a New England college, and always given to posing before youthful and unsophisticated audiences, called the Secretary of the Interior “a fraud, fond of theatrical attitudes and sensational effects and who desires to make a reputation as a reformer, but who has not any of the stuff out of which reformers are made.” The criticisms of these and of other excellent persons—well-meaning but misinformed about
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