History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Mckinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 8

The greatest event of Arthur's administration was the passage in 1883 of the Civil Service Act known as the Pendleton bill.¹ It was, as Ostrogorski truly remarked, "the Magna Charta of civil service reform."² "The whole of the constitutional history of England," wrote Dr. Stubbs, "is a commentary on this charter."³ Like- wise may it be said that the history of civil service reform in the United States is a commentary on the Act of 1883. Grant had shown what a half-hearted executive might do without congressional support. Hayes with single-minded purpose and pertinacity, opposed by all the leaders of his party except Sherman,⁴ his Secretary of the Treasury, had done as much under the circumstances for the cause of civil service reform as a zealous and common-sense President could do unaided by legislative action. As the result of his grapple with the spoils system, he wrote, "Legislation is required to establish the reform."⁵

Garfield, champion of the reform as representative, was a sad disappointment as presidential candidate and President. Lamentable is it to record for one who admired him while living that his death rather than his life

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