The scope and purpose of the reform have been much misapprehended;
and this has not only given rise to strong opposition, but has led to
its invocation by its friends to compass objects not in the least
related to it. Thus partisans of the patronage system have naturally
condemned it. Those who do not understand its meaning either mistrust it
or, when disappointed because in its present stage it is not applied to
every real or imaginary ill, accuse those charged with its enforcement
with faithlessness to civil-service reform. Its importance has
frequently been underestimated, and the support of good men has thus
been lost by their lack of interest in its success. Besides all these
difficulties, those responsible for the administration of the Government
in its executive branches have been and still are often annoyed and
irritated by the disloyalty to the service and the insolence of
employees who remain in place as the beneficiaries and the relics and
reminders of the vicious system of appointment which civil-service
reform was intended to displace.
And yet these are but the incidents of an advance movement which is
radical and far-reaching. The people are, notwithstanding, to be
congratulated upon the progress which has been made and upon the firm,
practical, and sensible foundation upon which this reform now rests.
With a continuation of the intelligent fidelity which has hitherto
characterized the work of the Commission; with a continuation and
increase of the favor and liberality which have lately been evinced by
the Congress in the proper equipment of the Commission for its work;
with a firm but conservative and reasonable support of the reform by
all its friends, and with the disappearance of opposition which must
inevitably follow its better understanding, the execution of the
civil-service law can not fail to ultimately answer the hopes in which
it had its origin.
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