THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
that matter discussed among politicians with great frankness. It is when it comes to notorious scandal that the public talk becomes quite virtuous.”
Remembering the renown Prussian officialdom has always enjoyed for the severest kind of official honor, I was much startled.
“And how,” I asked, “is the public business done by such office-holders?” “Oh,” was the reply, “it might be done much better and much more economically, but we are jogging along. This great country can stand a good deal of hard usage.”
“Are there many corrupt men in Congress?”
“No,” said Mr. Grund, “there are few, very few men there who could be bought with money. But there are more, perhaps many, who would tolerate corrupt men around them and protect hangers-on.”
Later inquiries and a longer acquaintance with public men and things convinced me that the pictures Mr. Grund had drawn for my instruction were substantially correct. The spoils system was in full flower but had not yet brought forth its worst fruit as we now know it, though, in some respects, the state of public sentiment created by it was, indeed, worse than that which we now witness. The cool indifference, for instance, with which the matter of “pickings,” the use by office-holders of official opportunities for personal gain, were then spoken of among politicians, even politicians of the better sort, would now not be tolerated for a moment. The public mind has become much more sensitive to the character of such abuses. Neither was there any active opposition to the spoils system in general. A few of the older members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives would indeed occasionally express their disgust with it, and their misgivings as to the dangerous influ-
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