PAGE ON THE SPOILS SYSTEM AND THE PROGRESS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM-ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION, SARATOGA, N. Y., SEPTEMBER 8, 1881.* ON THE NECESSITY AND PROGRESS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM -ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NATIONAL * Reprinted through the courtesy of Messrs. Harper & Bros.. from INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME. THE fourth and last volume of the AMERICAN ORATIONS deals with four great subjects of discussion in our history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Free Trade and Protection, Finance, and Civil Service Reform. In the division on the Civil War there has been substituted in the new edition, for Mr. Schurz's speech on the Democratic War Policy the spirited discussion between Breckenridge and Baker on the suppression of insurrection. The scene in which these two speeches were delivered in the United States Senate at the opening of the Civil War is full of historic and dramatic interest, while the speeches themselves are examples of superior oratory. Mr. Schurz appears to advantage in another part of the volume in his address on Civil Sevrice Reform.. The speeches of Thaddeus Stevens and Henry J. Raymond, delivered at the opening of the Reconstruction struggle under President Johnson, are also new material in this edition. They are fairly representative of two distinct views in that period of the controversy. These two speeches are substituted for the GarfieldBlackburn discussion over a "rider" to an appropriation bill designed to forbid federal control of elections within the States. This discussion was only incidental to the problem of reconstruction, and may be said to have occurred at a time (1879) subsequent to the close of the Reconstruction period proper. The material on Free Trade and Protection has been left unchanged for the reason that it appears to the present editor quite useless to attempt to secure better material on the tariff discussion. There might be added valuable similar material from later speeches on the tariff, but the two speeches of Clay and Hurd may be said to contain the essential merits of the long-standing tariff debate. |