A more important opponent was the then Democratic leader of the Senate, Mr. Gorman. In a speech attacking the Commission Mr. Gorman described with moving pathos how a friend of his, “a bright young man from Baltimore,” a Sunday-school scholar, well recommended by his pastor, wished to be a letter-carrier; and how he went before us to be examined. The first question we asked him, said Mr. Gorman, was the shortest route from Baltimore to China, to which the “bright young man” responded that he didn’t want to go to China, and had never studied up that route. Thereupon, said Mr. Gorman, we asked him all about the steamship lines from the United States to Europe, then branched him off into geology, tried him in chemistry, and finally turned him down.
Apparently Mr. Gorman did not know that we kept full records of our examinations. I at once wrote to him stating that I had carefully looked through all our examination papers and had not been able to find one question even remotely resembling any of these questions which he alleged had been asked, and that I would be greatly obliged if he would give me the name of the “bright young man” who had deceived him.
However, that “bright young man” remained permanently without a name. I also asked Mr. Gorman, if he did not wish to give us the name of his informant, to give us the date of the examination in which he was supposed to have taken part; and I offered, if he would send down a representative to look through our files, to give him all the aid we could in his effort to discover any such questions. But Mr. Gorman, not hitherto known as a sensitive soul, expressed himself as so shocked at the thought that the veracity of the “bright young man” should be doubted that he could not bring himself to answer my letter. So I made a public statement to the effect that no such questions had ever been asked. Mr. Gorman brooded over this; and during the next session of Congress he rose and complained that he had received a very “impudent” letter from me (my letter was a respectful note calling attention to the fact that, if he wished, he could by personal examination satisfy himself that his statements had no foundation in fact). He further stated that he had been “cruelly” called to account by me because he had been endeavoring to right a “great wrong” that the Civil Service Commission had committed; but he never, then or afterwards, furnished any clue to the identity of that child of his fondest fancy, the bright young man without a name.2
The incident is of note chiefly as shedding light on the mental makeup of the man who at the time was one of the two or three most influential leaders of the Democratic party. Mr. Gorman had been Mr. Cleveland’s party manager in the Presidential campaign, and was the Democratic leader in Congress. It seemed extraordinary that he should be so reckless as to make statements with no foundation in fact, which he might have known that I would not permit to pass unchallenged. Then, as now, the ordinary newspaper, in New York and elsewhere, was quite as reckless in its misstatements of fact about public men and measures; but for a man in Mr. Gorman’s position of responsible leadership such action seemed hardly worth while. However, it is at least to be said for Mr. Gorman that he was not trying by falsehood to take away any man’s character. It would be well for writers and speakers to bear in mind the remark of Pudd’nhead Wilson to the effect that while there are nine hundred and ninety-nine kinds of falsehood, the only kind specifically condemned in Scripture, just as murder, theft, and adultery are condemned, is bearing false witness against one’s neighbor.
One of the worst features of the old spoils system was the ruthless cruelty and brutality it so often bred in the treatment of faithful public servants without political influence. Life is hard enough and cruel enough at best, and this is as true of public service as of private service. Under no system will it be possible to do away with all favoritism and brutality and meanness and malice. But at least we can try to minimize the exhibition of these qualities. I once came across a case in Washington which very keenly excited my sympathy. Under an Administration prior to the one with which I was connected a lady had been ousted from a Government position. She came to me to see if she could be reinstated. (This was not possible, but by active work I did get her put back in a somewhat lower position, and this only by an appeal to the sympathy of a certain official.) She was so pallid and so careworn that she excited my sympathy and I made inquiries about her. She was a poor woman with two children, a widow. She and her two children were in actual want. She could barely keep the two children decently clad, and she could not give them the food growing children need. Three years before she had been employed in a bureau in a department of Washington, doing her work faithfully, at a salary of about $800. It was enough to keep her and her two children in clothing, food, and shelter. One day the chief of the bureau called her up and told her he was very sorry that he had to dismiss her. In great distress she asked him why; she thought that she had been doing her work satisfactorily. He answered her that she had been doing well, and that he wished very much that he could keep her, that he would do so if
