The Writings of Carl Schurz/To President Cleveland, March 21st, 1885
TO PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
My dear Mr. President: Pardon me for asking the favor of a moment's attention. When I had the honor of an interview with you at Albany, I received, from what you said to me, the impression that you were strongly inclined to reappoint Mr. Pearson.[1] The question you asked me whether it was proper and customary to renominate such an officer before the expiration of his term, suggested the inference that the reappointment of Mr. Pearson would be one of your first official acts. What I heard from your more confidential friends strengthened that impression and inference as to your intentions. Reports received from Washington, and still more the circumstance that Mr. Pearson's term has been permitted to expire without his reappointment, have created an apprehension that the matter is in doubt.
My name does not appear upon a single petition or recommendation for any appointment in your gift. I believe most, if not all, of the Independents who took an active part in the late campaign have followed the same line of conduct. If I, in accord with them, now say a word to you in behalf of the reappointment of Postmaster Pearson, it is not on account of any personal interest in him—for he is a stranger to me—but because his case is a representative, not an individual, one. We speak not for a person but for a public cause.
As you have permitted me to believe, it is your opinion no less than mine that to keep in place, or to reappoint, without regard to party affiliation, officers who have been conspicuously efficient in the discharge of their duties, who have maintained a good general character and who have not meddled with party politics beyond the ordinary exercise of a citizen's right, is a good rule, in fact a rule demanded by the public interest. That the enforcement of such a rule will greatly add to the character and efficiency of the service is self-evident, for it will teach all public officers that the best possible performance of their official duties without partisan service will give them an excellent claim to be retained in place even if there be a change of party in power,—and that no other claim can be depended on. It is equally clear that without the establishment of such a rule the public service will never become a non-partisan service, but will always have a strong tendency to degenerate into a party machine, periodical “new ideals” being the regular order. If upon the expiration of the term of every Republican officeholder you put a Democrat in his place, the whole service, outside of the comparatively small number of subordinate places covered by the civil service law and a few other exceptions, will, at the end of your Presidential term, be essentially, and purposely, a Democratic service; and if then the Republicans win, they will only have to follow your example to make it an essentially Republican service again, and so on and on. But if you establish and follow the rule above indicated, reappointing a Republican here and there on account of proved fitness, you will have made a precedent which no succeeding Administration can afford to disregard, and thus you will have conferred a great and lasting benefit upon the Republic.
The reappointment of Mr. Pearson is in this respect regarded as a test of your policy, and it is only in this sense that I address you in its behalf. I need scarcely add that the failure of your Administration to adopt this rule and to illustrate it by keeping Mr. Pearson in place would disappoint the hopes of those of your supporters who have the success of your endeavors to reform abuses and to purify the political atmosphere most earnestly at heart. They cordially appreciate the noble resistance you have offered to the pressure of the spoils politicians, and they would be much pained at seeing that record blurred, and the cause they have in common with you compromised, by an act calculated to render uncertain, or at least more difficult, your complete success. It is generally believed, although you never made a pledge to that effect, that you went to Washington with the intention of reappointing Mr. Pearson. It was generally expected, by friend and foe, that this intention would be carried out. If now, in spite of your own inclination to do a thing so good in itself and so beneficial in its consequences, and in spite of an overwhelming sentiment in its favor among the business community here, regardless of party, and among the friends of reform throughout the country, considerations of a partisan character should after all outweigh all this, and thus maintain their ascendancy, keeping the field open for a future revival of spoils politics, the disappointment would indeed be great.
But it would be a disappointment not only to many of your friends,—the result would disappoint you too. It would greatly encourage, but by no means satisfy, the office-hunters and patronage-dealers. By encouraging them it would bring them down upon you with new expectations and more exacting demands. With these demands you would not be able to comply without giving up your whole reform policy. And by refusing them you exasperate the spoilsmen in the Democratic party just as much as by appointing hundreds of Pearsons. Nothing will satisfy them but a complete surrender. Half a reform will make those people just as much your enemies as a whole reform, but it will not make you half as strong with the most patriotic and enlightened class of citizens. The approval of public opinion is always the principal strength of any reform Administration, and it will in a great measure depend upon the completeness of the reform policy. This has been the experience of all Administrations which made attempts in that direction. But owing to your splendid record and the fact that your performances have always gone beyond your formal promises, public expectation is now higher than it has ever been before.
The importance of the subject and my deep interest in it will, I hope, serve as an excuse for the earnestness of my language.
- ↑ The postmaster of N. Y. City.