HENRY G. PEARSON 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN L GODKIN
 
 L< 
 
 HENRY G. PEARSON 
 
 DELIVERED JUNE 21, 1894 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN L GODKIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED
 
 T MMEDIATELY after the death of Mr. Pearson, a spontaneous 
 movement took place to commemorate in some suitable 
 way his character and public services. A committee was 
 constituted, consisting of the following gentlemen : 
 
 George William Curtis, R. R. Bowker, Charles R. Miller, Carl 
 Schurz, William Potts, Dorman B. Eaton, Edwin L. Godkin, 
 William J. Coombs, Thomas Maitland, Dean Sage, Alexander 
 Mackay-Smith, Isidor Straus. Mr. Curtis was chosen Chairman 
 of the Committee, and Mr. Potts Secretary and Treasurer. Upon 
 the death of Mr. Curtis, Mr. Schurz became Chairman. 
 
 Measures were at once taken to raise by subscription the amount 
 needed for the form of monument contemplated, for which it was 
 deemed that between three and four thousand dollars would be 
 sufficient, and this amount was promptly furnished by those to 
 whom Mr. Pearson's work had commended itself. 
 
 A contract was made with Mr. Daniel C. French, the eminent 
 sculptor, for a portrait bust of bronze of heroic size, to rest upon 
 a suitable pedestal of Swedish granite. It was originally intended 
 that the monument should be erected in some public place in the 
 open air, but no suitable location being available, it was finally de- 
 termined that it should be placed in the southern lobby of the 
 general post-office at New York, the building which had been for 
 so many years the scene of Mr. Pearson's labors. 
 
 At 5 o'clock on the afternoon of June 21, 1894, in the presence 
 of a large number of persons, many of them connected with the 
 postal service, the monument was unveiled with simple ceremonies 
 by Gen. Thomas L. James, who was Postmaster-General of the 
 United States when Mr. Pearson became Postmaster at New 
 York. In the evening of the same day a meeting was held at the 
 Berkeley Lyceum, in that city, at which Mr. Edwin L. Godkin, a 
 member of the Memorial Committee, and Editor of the New 
 York Evening Post, delivered the address given in the following 
 pages.
 
 Upon the pedestal of the monument appears the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 HENRY G. PEARSON, 
 Born July 29, 1844. Died April 20, 1889. 
 
 Postmaster at New York 
 
 April i, 1881, to April 20, 1889. 
 
 An example of purest 
 
 fidelity to official duty.
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 WE have met this evening to do what, without explana- 
 tion, would to a stranger seem very extraordinary 
 that is, to pay honor to the memory of a postmaster for 
 simply having done his duty as a postmaster. Henry G. Pearson, 
 whose memorial bust we have unveiled to-day, for eight years 
 faithfully and efficiently sorted and distributed the mails, and saw 
 that his subordinates did their duty, at the leading post-office of 
 the country this and nothing more. He was first appointed by 
 President Garfield, which, as he belonged to his party, was, 
 perhaps, not unusual. But he was retained in office by President 
 Cleveland, and it is this retention which will give point to most of 
 what I am about to say. The stranger might, therefore, well ask 
 how this had come to merit extraordinary posthumous honors 
 whether it was really true that most or all the other postmasters 
 neglected their duty, and how it happened that the regular 
 postal service of the inhabitants of New York had come to be 
 heroic work, meriting a hero's reward. 
 
 To answer these questions fully would be to recount the whole 
 history of the civil service of the United States. This I do not 
 propose to do, and could not do, even if I had time. But I owe 
 it to the good and brave man of whom we are trying to keep the 
 public permanently in mind, to say enough to show that we are 
 not really making too much of him ; that he had solid claims on 
 the gratitude of his successors and of the public of this city, and 
 that if there should ever be a real, thorough, complete, and endur- 
 ing reform of the civil service, he will have just claims to be con- 
 sidered one of its precursors. 
 
 One of the peculiarities of the spoils system in the Federal ser- 
 vice is that it is mainly visible in the cities and large towns, and 
 above all in the great seaports. The country people know little 
 about it. What they see of Federal officials is so slight that they 
 feel that so much agitation over the mode of their appointment is 
 
 3
 
 making a great fuss about nothing. This has always been one of 
 the chief difficulties of the civil-service-reform movement. To 
 give it life and vigor and point it has to be carried on in the 
 neighborhood of a great custom-house or post-office, or else at 
 the seat of government itself that is, in some place where the 
 people are familiar with the working of the spoils system on a 
 great scale. The countryman, who sees nothing in a change of 
 administration but a change of United States marshals or the 
 substitution of one country grocer for another as postmaster, finds 
 it difficult to understand what a prodigious fountain of political 
 corruption a large custom-house or post-office may be made. 
 This has made it very difficult to move the general public on be- 
 half of the reform, to bring it home to them, in short, as one of 
 the burning questions of the day, as the thing which stands in 
 the way of much legitimate extension of governmental functions. 
 
 More than this, it has concentrated the energies of the reformer 
 on the points where Federal servants most abound and, above 
 all, on the Federal offices in this city. It has compelled us to talk 
 and act as if the purification of the New York post-office and 
 custom-house were the great end and aim of our agitation. It 
 has, in a measure, led us to feel that if we get a good man put at 
 the head of either of these establishments our battle is won. It 
 is at these points, too, that the spoils system makes the most ener- 
 getic resistance. In truth, after a Presidential election, I venture 
 to assert that there is no consequence of victory, legislative or 
 administrative, which for weeks and months so occupies the 
 minds of men interested in politics in this city, as the question 
 who is to be postmaster and who collector. These offices are to 
 the spoilsman the greatest rewards the President has to bestow, 
 and the idea that they will not be bestowed as spoils always makes 
 the politicians smile. 
 
 For fully fifty years, except during Mr. Pearson's terms, the 
 postmastership of New York has never been filled except for 
 political reasons, and with political men. Never during that 
 period, except in his case, has the interest of the public mails 
 been the leading consideration in making the appointment. The 
 place was always given to politicians of some local prominence, 
 some of them very good men, in the belief and expectation that 
 they would use it to reward the people who worked at the main- 
 tenance of the party organization in this city.
 
 This mode of disposing of the post-office leads me to say what 
 may sound like an apology for the spoils system, but which the 
 truth of history calls for. Government by universal suffrage, 
 familiar, natural, and time-honored as it seems to some of us, is a 
 new and modern idea. Until the beginning of this century, the 
 notion that all should vote the ignorant as well as the wise, the 
 poor man as well as the man of property never entered into 
 popular thought. It is really an outcome of our own Revolution 
 and of the French Revolution. But those who introduced it 
 into politics had no idea how it would work. They were used to 
 small communities in which every man knew his neighbor and 
 shared his interests and ideas. Of the prodigious masses of popu- 
 lation which have sprung up in all modern States under the influ- 
 ence of manufactures, improved agriculture, locomotion, and 
 sanitation, they had no foresight or conception. Moreover, rea- 
 soning from what they saw around them, they thought that with 
 the power to vote would come eagerness to vote, and that there 
 never would be any difficulty in getting people to the polls. The 
 trouble of finding candidates, too, acceptable to very large bodies 
 of men never dawned on them. Such things in old times were 
 settled by half-a-dozen gentlemen round a dinner-table, or by 
 some individual taking it into his head to be a candidate and 
 offering himself to the electors. For a while the work of presi- 
 dential nomination with us was done by a volunteer committee of 
 Congress. But I do not think I am rash in saying that the men 
 of 1820 had no more idea of our present nominating machinery, 
 from the primaries up to the national convention, than they had 
 of railways and telegraphs and telephones. Its complication is 
 very great, and increases in the ratio of the voting mass. More- 
 over, it is not a machine which once started will work of itself. 
 It has to be kept in order by incessant activity from year's end to 
 year's end. The managers can never for a day take their hands 
 off it. The voting multitude has to be persuaded, placated, and 
 informed ; the ignorant have to be enlightened, and the indiffer- 
 ent have to be aroused, and the lazy have to be got to vote, and 
 all this not in one day, but more or less every day in the year. 
 
 Now, it was not unnatural that the fathers or conceivers of 
 universal suffrage, so to speak, as they found this work growing 
 on their hands, should, in looking about for some one to do it, 
 have hit upon the plan of making the office-holders do it, and
 
 making their salaries the reward of both their official and party 
 service. I am not either praising or condemning or excusing 
 them. I am simply explaining. It was a policy which met a 
 present and pressing need, and it seemed to add considerably to 
 the interest and excitement of elections. These elections became 
 what the day of battle is to an army, the test of all the drill and 
 discipline and organization of preceding years, of the sagacity of 
 leaders and the fidelity of followers. It soon became very popu- 
 lar, and more than this as it became familiar. It came to appear 
 the natural, necessary, and above all the American way of pre- 
 paring for political victory and of filling offices. National feeling 
 was enlisted on its side. Other ways, or what are called " busi- 
 ness ways," got to look foreign, monarchical, or, worse still, 
 " English." 
 
 I mention this as perhaps the greatest difficulty the civil-service 
 reformers had to face when they began their agitation thirty years 
 ago. They found the spoils system thoroughly in possession of 
 the public mind, with a certain show of utility behind it, and with 
 national feeling to a certain degree enlisted in its favor. I re- 
 member, when Mr. Jenckes initiated the movement for a change, 
 it was looked on as in some degree a Prussian whimsey some- 
 thing the long-haired people were taking up to fill up' their time, 
 now that slavery was abolished. People got to believe that in no 
 other way could the work of politics be carried on ; that the 
 office-holders must work or elections could not be won. Proba- 
 bly the formidable difficulty which the reformers had to encounter 
 was this widely diffused feeling of the necessity of the thing, the 
 belief that party government could not be carried on without it. 
 One of our best weapons in this debate has been the example of 
 England, the only country in the world whose political institutions 
 and political habits resemble our own, and in which, although 
 not over thirty offices are vacated on the change of ministry, the 
 excitement of a general election reaches fever heat, and speakers 
 and money abound. Another, and possibly a more powerful one, 
 has been the fact that among ourselves the party which drives 
 another out of power always wins without the help of the offices. 
 To this it may be answered that the opposition also works hard 
 because it expects office if it wins ; but to the argument that the 
 most lavish use of the offices has never yet sufficed to keep the 
 party in power, there is no good answer. I do not like to cite
 
 particular illustrations, because it might seem what is called in- 
 vidious. But I may make the general statement that every Presi- 
 dent who, during the last fifty years, has failed to get a renomina- 
 tion or re-election has failed in spite of the vigorous use of all the 
 patronage at his command, and that every opposition candidate 
 who has succeeded has succeeded without anything better to offer 
 than promises, which are by general consent treated in political 
 circles as an uncommonly weak reliance. Anyhow, whatever 
 view we may take of the question of necessity, the general effect 
 of the system on our politics has been the effect of a standing 
 army on the militia. The existence of a large body of regulars, 
 as I may call them, among us has been to produce the impression 
 that the winning of votes at an election, the persuasion of people 
 to elect this man and reject that one, in which the work of popu- 
 lar government consists, was the duty of the office-holder only or 
 mainly ; that it was something which only devolved secondarily, 
 or not at all, on other members of the party, and that as long as 
 these office-holders were ready to do it, other people need only 
 take a languid interest in it. The general result is that although 
 we talk of the excitement of a presidential election as something 
 prodigious and unparalleled, it is not really so great and does not 
 move nearly so many people as a general election in England. 
 There is more racket made by our newspapers, and more of 
 spectacular modes of working up enthusiasm, but the active par- 
 ticipation in the work of persuasion of all classes and conditions 
 of men is, I think, greater there than it is here. 
 
 Another consideration, and a more important one, is, I think, 
 that the electioneering work of office-holders is more likely to lead 
 to corruption than that of volunteers. A man who feels he is 
 working for money, or, in other words, for his bread and butter, 
 not unnaturally seeks to arouse the same motives in others. It 
 would be very hard for him to excite in others an enthusiasm 
 which he does not himself feel, or to appeal to a disinterestedness 
 which he is not able to exhibit in his own person. So I venture 
 on the opinion which I admit is purely speculative that can- 
 vassing done by office-holders is necessarily more expensive than 
 that done by outsiders, or, rather, by the general public. This 
 is, however, neither here nor there, as the saying is. What I have 
 been seeking to bring home to you is the exceeding difficulty in 
 1884 of procuring such an appointment as that of Mr. Pearson to
 
 8 
 
 the New York post-office by a President of the opposite party, in 
 the teeth of the obstacles to it presented by long-established usage 
 and what really seemed the necessities of the case. It is quite 
 true that not only Mr. Cleveland, but a very large proportion of 
 the public men of the party which came into power with him, 
 were pledged, or in some manner committed, to the principle of 
 the merit system. But, gentlemen, we all know the enormous 
 distance which separates theory from practice. There is not one 
 of us who does not feel how much easier it is to approve than to 
 act. It is a common human experience that, just as men when 
 they come into possession of great wealth seldom or never do the 
 things they thought they would do when they were poor, so also, 
 when men come into power, they seldom incline to the things 
 which moved them before they achieved power. From the new 
 standpoint come new ideas. I remember when civil-service re- 
 form first began to be discussed in Congress and the first attempts 
 were made to pass the present civil-service act, the number of 
 members who were in favor of civil-service reform, but could not 
 bring themselves to support " this particular measure," was very 
 large. It was a good while before " this particular measure " was 
 able to find any favor. Any other measure that could be thought 
 of was apparently always more meritorious than the one before 
 the House. 
 
 You are familiar, too, with the way each of our great parties 
 feels about the existing law, as administered by the other party. 
 Neither ever owns itself as hostile to reform in general, but the 
 reform the other party is administering is never real reform, it is 
 something monstrous, abnormal, hybrid, and debauching. But 
 in 1884, when Mr. Pearson was continued in charge of the New 
 York post-office, although President Cleveland had shown him- 
 self in the Governor's chair a very good friend of civil-service 
 reform and had said much in its favor, nevertheless I think I may 
 venture on the supposition that the reform he had in mind was 
 reform among the minor or subordinate officers, the clerks or 
 messengers, and sorters, and carriers, the inspectors, and gaugers. 
 The idea of applying the principle to the headship of the greatest 
 post-office or custom-house in the country was rather new and 
 startling. For it is a cardinal rule of the spoils system that it is 
 not the nature of the duties but the number of men it commands 
 or controls that constitute the importance of an office. No spoils-
 
 man ever sincerely believes in non-interference with his subor- 
 dinates in matters of politics on the part of the head of an office. 
 He laughs when you tell him that they are absolutely free to vote 
 as they please ; that they need not do the political work unless 
 they like, and may work on whichever side they choose. He 
 feels sure that influence must trickle down through the ranks and 
 keep the subordinate mindful that he owes his " bread and but- 
 ter " to the party in power ; consequently, no matter how well 
 protected he may be by the rules against interference from on 
 high, the mere fact that the superior has power to dismiss has 
 immense importance in the politician's eyes. The bestowal, 
 therefore, of an office employing many men, on one who has not 
 been active in politics and had belonged to the other party, and 
 with an eye only to effective public service, was in 1884 and 
 may I not say, still is ? looked upon as an act of great hardihood 
 a great departure from sound and wholesome traditions. 
 
 In my opinion it could not have been brought about but for 
 two things. One was that Mr. Cleveland not unnaturally felt 
 grateful to the mugwumps for their support, for he owed a great 
 deal of his reputation to their labors. He was, therefore, able to 
 say to the spoilsmen that this was the only thing they asked for, 
 and that they must have it, as the reward for their political 
 activity. This was an argument which every politician could 
 understand. 
 
 The other agency is what I may venture to call, for want of a 
 better name, the course of events, by which I mean the increasing 
 exactingness of modern society in the matter of business methods. 
 I think we have owed a large part of what we have got in the 
 way of civil-service reform to this exactingness. I believe we 
 shall some day owe to it a reform in the consular service. It is 
 becoming increasingly difficult to tell people what the consular 
 service is for, and then to keep your face straight when showing 
 them how it is filled. The world demands more and more in all 
 service some kind of relation between your means and your ends. 
 
 It is said, and I believe with truth, that nothing has done so 
 much to promote temperance as the greatly increased use of 
 machinery in modern industry. One of the peculiarities of all 
 good machines is that they cannot be managed by drunken men. 
 The touch of a drunkard's hand sets them wild. A very large 
 proportion of the skilled labor of the world is now employed
 
 10 
 
 either in the superintendence or in the aid of machinery. An 
 artisan, therefore, who wishes to get and keep employment, has, 
 as a rule, to keep sober. The anger of a mismanaged machine is 
 so serious in its consequences that no employer can afford to 
 overlook even a single case of intemperance. The man who 
 drinks goes, and cannot come back. So that by a beautiful pro- 
 cess of artificial selection all the good places of the world are 
 naturally passing into the hands of the sober men, a result which 
 would probably never have been brought about by mere moral 
 suasion. It has been brought about by the increasing damage 
 done by drunkenness, if I may use the expression a fine illus- 
 tration, as I see it, of the moral government of the world, of the 
 way in which even the dark things of our life assist in the pro- 
 gress of the race. Now, this course of events, or if you like the 
 phrase better, the growth of business, is in like manner making 
 for civil-service reform. The volume of affairs, especially in the 
 matter of the collection of revenue and the carriage and distribu- 
 tion of letters, is growing so large in all modern civilized countries, 
 that the use of the same men for two different services, or two 
 different kinds of work, is becoming more and more difficult, and 
 the public is at the same time becoming more and more exacting. 
 The old custom of having a man collect customs duties or sort 
 letters in the daytime and work at " politics ' in the evening is 
 becoming harder and harder to maintain. His official work is 
 too voluminous ; his mistakes too serious. The contrast of this 
 system with the increasing specialization of private business is too 
 marked. We are becoming more and more conscious that the 
 road to excellence or efficiency in almost every branch of human 
 endeavor lies through a rigid attention to one thing. This is 
 true of science, of literature, of art, of law, and of medicine ; it is 
 also true of business of all kinds. The jack-of-all-trades, once 
 an eminent and much admired person, has been cast down from 
 his high estate. His very name is now almost a synonym for 
 failure and incompetency. The world is insisting more and 
 more that none of us shall do more than one thing, and more 
 and more believing that the man who tries to do more than one 
 thing will not succeed. Therefore, in my belief, the political 
 office-holder, the man who both runs the primaries and the con- 
 ventions and collects the revenues and sorts the letters, is destined 
 to disappear at no distant date.
 
 II 
 
 But, gentlemen, we must be careful about pushing too far the 
 analogy between private and public business. We know very 
 well that if an express company were to select its employees on 
 the ground of their politics every four years, to turn out its best 
 hands because they were Republicans or Democrats, or were to 
 turn them out because they had been in their places long enough, 
 or because it was time to give some other and inexperienced men 
 a chance at the salaries, or because they were not active enough 
 in some sort of outside business or amusement ; because, for 
 instance, they did not play baseball or lawn tennis well enough 
 we know that such an express company would soon come to 
 grief. Its business would rapidly decline. Some rival would 
 soon offer quicker despatch and greater security, and it would 
 either go into bankruptcy or apply to the courts to be wound up. 
 All private concerns are bound to use nothing but the best- 
 known methods in the administration of their affairs, including 
 the best-known methods of getting good service from their em- 
 ployees. They have to do for them the things, whatever they may 
 be, which experience of human nature teaches us tend to secure 
 diligence, honesty, and fidelity, and these are, mainly, sufficient 
 pay, reasonable work, but above all security of tenure. No cor- 
 poration or firm can get good service from men who know that 
 good service will neither enable them to obtain promotion nor 
 keep their places. Every corporation or firm knows this. If 
 you go into any great and successful office or factory which is 
 carried on for profit, and ask the managers what their system of 
 employment is, you will find the principles and rules of what 
 some of our friends in Washington used to call " snivel-service 
 reform " in full force. If you will, for instance, visit the Penn- 
 sylvania or New York Central Railroad, or Adams Express, or 
 any great trust company, and ask them in what manner they deal 
 with their employees, you will not need to read one of our docu- 
 ments. Our whole plan will be as plain to you as a pikestaff, 
 and you will find it far pleasanter than sitting down to study our 
 tracts or listen to addresses. 
 
 But the penalty, or sanction, as the jurists call it, which keeps 
 this system in force, is failure, or insolvency, or, in other words, 
 financial ruin. Without this every one of them, I venture to 
 assert, would go on just as the government goes on. Much as I 
 respect the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, or of the
 
 12 
 
 New York Central, or of the United States Trust Company, 
 I am sure that were it in my power to go to them and tell them 
 that no matter how they conducted their business, or how many 
 losses they experienced, their deficit should always be made up 
 to them, and funds for their dividends should be always supplied 
 from outside sources, I firmly believe they would lay aside all 
 restraint and establish the spoils system within a very few 
 months. 
 
 In the government, as you know, we have no such penalty. 
 No matter how it conducts the public business, the taxpayer 
 makes up the deficit. But when the government gets into trouble, 
 the gallant taxpayer comes forward and asks how much it needs, 
 and whether it will borrow the amount or levy it in taxes, and 
 tells it to cheer up, that the money is ready. Whatever happens, 
 no matter who is to blame, no matter by whose folly or fault the 
 deficit has been wrought, the credit of the government must not 
 suffer. Consequently, we cannot look with any confidence to 
 any speedy change through the mere course of events. Matters 
 will not mend rapidly, for business reasons, as they would mend 
 in a factory or railroad. Pressure has to be brought to bear on 
 the men in power from the outside. Public opinion has to act on 
 them. What interests them most is not remote, but immediate 
 results. Their main interest is to keep the party in power, and 
 keep themselves in favor with the men who make nominations. 
 They are not particularly troubled by hearing from you that their 
 doings will in the long run greatly injure the government. They 
 know the government will last their time and somewhat longer. 
 They will not hasten unless their personal prospects are threat- 
 ened. This means that agitation, watchfulness, and incessant 
 criticism are necessary for the advancement of the cause. 
 
 It does not do for its friends to trust to the good intentions of 
 any man in office. It does not do to assume that he is doing as 
 well as he can. These friends can never forget that all the strong 
 influences of political life are silently working in Washington all 
 the time against the change. It is hardly an exaggeration to say 
 that every Congressman who visits the President puts in a word 
 or exerts an influence of some kind against it. Every President 
 who wishes to exert any influence in legislation finds himself 
 under a constant temptation to disregard it. In fact, the minute 
 he announces, or it appears, that he greatly desires the passage of
 
 '3 
 
 a certain measure, he, if I may use the expression, appears to 
 Congressmen to announce that he has offices for sale, and asks 
 for bids. Many of them say at once : " Now is our chance ; if the 
 old man wants our votes, he can have them, but he must pay his 
 price." The old custom of appealing to the public or forcing legis- 
 lation through the pressure of popular opinion seems wellnigh to 
 have died out. The method which has taken its place is just as 
 corrupt and as hostile to efficient public service as if money passed 
 instead of office. The more, too, a President is interested in pub- 
 lic affairs, and the more he wishes to see his ideas embodied in 
 legislation, the stronger is the temptation to resort to this cheap 
 and easy method of influencing congressional action. Conse- 
 quently, as long as there remains a single non-political office out- 
 side the rules, so long will the occasion for agitation and criticism 
 continue. To escape criticism has been the great ambition of 
 rulers ever since civilized societies were founded, but we owe 
 everything worth having, both in political and social life, to the 
 fact that they have never succeeded. 
 
 There are about two hundred thousand offices in the service of 
 the United States. Of these about forty three thousand have 
 been brought under the rules. A large proportion of the 
 remainder are postmasters. But no rational man who was not 
 familiar with the history of American politics would suppose that 
 the despatch of the mails and the distribution of letters was the 
 chief function of these officers, or, indeed, one of their duties at 
 all. They seem to exist over a large part of the country as the 
 reward for political activity and signs of victory. In many cases 
 an election does not seem won unless the post-office has changed 
 hands. After the last presidential canvass, an incident occurred 
 in Ohio, I think, which illustrated in an amusing way the strong- 
 hold on the popular mind of the idea that the post-office is simply 
 a part of the spoils of war. A German who held a post-office in 
 Ohio under President Cleveland was turned out by President 
 Harrison, and a soldier's widow put in his place. When Presi- 
 dent Cleveland was re-elected, as soon as the decisive returns 
 reached the village, the German ran down to the post-office and 
 said to the widow : " We have won the election ; the post-office 
 is mine." And she was so keenly alive to the proprieties of the 
 occasion that she promptly packed up her papers and handed the 
 office over to him that very night, and had to be reminded from
 
 '4 
 
 Washington the next day that she was really still in office, and 
 was responsible for the letters and accounts. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I do not need to go again here over all the 
 arguments against this state of things. You have heard over and 
 over of the terrible and yet ridiculous demands made on the time 
 and strength of the incoming President and his postmaster-gen- 
 eral by the redistribution of these offices among his followers. 
 At the beginning of every new administration, the post-offices 
 take up fully three months of the time of the postmaster-general, 
 and nearly as much of that of the President. You do not need 
 to be reminded of all this, but I think a great many people are 
 puzzled by the question how the trouble is to be avoided. The 
 post-offices have to be filled ; the filling of the smaller ones, the 
 fourth-class offices, as they are called, which are mostly small 
 affairs, takes nearly as much trouble as the filling of the larger 
 ones. As they are often annexed to a store, and as there are often 
 only two men in the place capable of filling them, the Republican 
 and the Democrat, it would be impossible to put them under the 
 rules, and award them to competitive examination. So all sorts 
 of plans, including popular election, have been suggested for the 
 selection of candidates, but the simplest expedient of all has, I 
 think, been neglected ; I mean the plan of not making vacancies. 
 Our own is the only country in the civilized world in which the 
 selection of postmasters, gives any trouble, and they have every- 
 where to be selected from much the same material. The reason 
 is that we are the only civilized country in which vacancies occur, 
 except through death, resignation, or misconduct. Vacancies 
 which occur from these three causes are, of course, easily man- 
 aged. It does not trouble any postmaster-general to fill them. 
 They are necessarily comparatively few in number, and they have 
 the supreme merit of being in the popular eyes what I may call 
 business vacancies that is, vacancies which cannot be avoided 
 or which the good of the service calls for. 
 
 We must never forget that the manner of filling offices is a con- 
 stant lesson in government to the bulk of the people, and worth 
 any number of manuals or treatises or schoolbooks. The very 
 worst effect of the spoils system an effect which we see in our 
 large cities more markedly than elsewhere is the way it teaches 
 the public to separate duties from public offices, to think of 
 offices as places to which no duties are attached, or in which the
 
 '5 
 
 duties play a subordinate part to the privileges. In truth, I may 
 ask, can any people receive a worse lesson in politics than the 
 spectacle of fitness disregarded or treated as of secondary im- 
 portance by its public men, and, in fact, by everybody who has to 
 do with the filling of places ? Now, in no way is this lesson taught 
 so widely as by the filling and unfilling of our post-offices. The 
 rural population, as I remarked in the beginning, sees little or 
 nothing of the spoils system where it most abounds, in the 
 great cities. And I do not mean to say that country post-offices 
 call for extraordinary talent or training. What I do say is that 
 the government can as readily as in any other offices indicate by 
 its manner of filling them and making vacancies in them its prin- 
 ciple of administration, its way of looking at the public service. 
 When it turns the postmaster out, no matter how efficient he may 
 have been, at the end of four years, and appoints another who 
 knows nothing of post-office business in his place, on account 
 of his political activity, it says as plainly as possible to the people : 
 " This office exists primarily for the purpose of rewarding election- 
 eering services. The manner in which it distributes your letters 
 and carries your mails is a secondary consideration." He must be 
 a stupid rustic indeed who does not cover the whole public service 
 with this view of the post-office and see in the whole machinery of 
 government a ponderous engine for distributing salaries among 
 politicians. The Tammany men whom we all now abuse so much 
 have simply carried the spoils system one step farther than the 
 Federal administration, and avow it a little more cynically. Con- 
 sequently, as long as post-offices remain an instrument of corrup- 
 tion, we shall never get the competitive system really rooted 
 in the popular mind. 
 
 I know the continuance in office of a postmaster who is not in 
 sympathy with the administration for the time being, or who 
 cares nothing about politics, is now to the public of the rural dis- 
 tricts a strange spectacle, and the reason is that the rural man has 
 never seen any other. Half the work of life is done by the asso- 
 ciation of ideas. A man who only knew of post-offices as places 
 where the public mails were opened, sorted, and distributed would 
 be amused by our present system. But if he saw our system 
 at work for a good many years, he would by mere familiarity be 
 brought to see nothing peculiar about it. Two reform Presidents 
 in succession could certainly bring the people back to the old
 
 i6 
 
 way of looking at post-offices solely as places for the distribution 
 of correspondence. I know very well that there still lingers 
 in the minds of a great many politicians the notion that no man 
 will serve the government faithfully in any office, no matter 
 how small, who has not at least voted for the party in power, and 
 that this ought to furnish, even from the reformer's point of view, 
 a justification for making a "clean sweep" on every change of 
 administration. Nothing could better illustrate than this view the 
 extent to which the spoils system has banished from people's 
 minds the idea of country as having the first claim on their 
 allegiance, and substituted that of party. For, of course, the man 
 who in the service of his government wilfully failed in his duty to 
 it, damaged its property, betrayed its interests, did things and left 
 things undone to bring it into discredit, because the administra- 
 tion did not belong to his party, would be just as much a traitor 
 as if he did all this to oblige a foreign enemy. If an army officer 
 or a naval officer were to execute his orders slackly because he 
 disliked the party in power, we should all agree that he deserved 
 to be shot, and we are all perfectly confident that no such man 
 could be found in either the army or navy, either in war or peace. 
 Nothing would get us to believe that the officers of the Coast 
 Survey and Naval Observation would make mistakes in their com- 
 putations, play tricks with their telescopes or theodolites, in order 
 to bring the existing administration into disrepute, and yet many 
 of us try to persuade ourselves that if you left men permanently 
 in the custom-house or post-office, with good wages and with 
 security of tenure, they would, whenever a President was elected 
 they did not like, begin to undervalue imported goods, cheat in 
 the weighing, put letters into the wrong boxes, or throw them into 
 the sewers instead of delivering them. Those who take this view 
 of the American civil service ought to hide their heads for shame 
 and yet they are very conspicuous and often very noisy. 
 
 Henry G. Pearson was born in the city of New York, July 29, 
 1844. His father, a native of Philadelphia, was a printer ; his 
 mother was the daughter of Mr. Thomas, an old merchant of this 
 city, who lived on State Street, in whose house Mr. Pearson was 
 born. His father was one of the California Argonauts of '49. 
 In crossing the isthmus he contracted a fever and died shortly 
 after his arrival at San Francisco. Mr. Pearson's mother died 
 when he was but fourteen years old, when the young man started
 
 17 
 
 out for himself in the battle of life. Michael Hoffman, then 
 deputy collector of the port, secured for the boy a minor place in 
 the custom-house, where he remained until some time in the 
 summer of 1860, when Mr. Hoffman gave him a note to Gen. 
 Dix, then postmaster, who appointed him to a place in the post- 
 office. In 1862, upon the establishment of the railway mail ser- 
 vice, he was detailed as a postal clerk on the route between New 
 York and Washington. He drew the plans of the first postal car, 
 which was built under his supervision. He remained in the rail- 
 way postal service, becoming the chief clerk on the route 
 between New York and Washington, until February, 1873, when 
 he was appointed superintendent of mails in the New York 
 post-office. 
 
 Upon the appointment of Bankson T. Morgan to the position 
 of police judge, Mr. Pearson was made assistant postmaster by 
 Postmaster James, in July, 1873. On the 7th of March, 1881, 
 when Postmaster James was called to Washington by Gen. 
 Garfield as postmaster-general, Mr. Pearson was appointed acting 
 postmaster, and a few weeks later postmaster of New York by 
 President Garfield. He was immediately confirmed by the Senate, 
 and assumed the duties of postmaster April i, 1881. He was 
 reappointed by President Cleveland in April, 1885, and confirmed 
 by the Senate. He died April 20, 1889, before the expiration of 
 his term of office, but after his successor, Cornelius Van Cott, 
 had been nominated by President Harrison and confirmed by the 
 Senate. 
 
 This is the whole record of his official career. There would, 
 as I began by saying, be nothing very remarkable about it but for 
 one thing that he was appointed, against all precedents, because 
 he was the fittest man, and that he devoted himself during his 
 whole term of service to the efficient performance of a postmaster's 
 work and to nothing else. If you suppose that his reappoint- 
 ment was easily obtained, you would be very much mistaken. It 
 was bitterly opposed, and it seemed at times on the point of mis- 
 carriage. I think all the working politicians considered the office 
 in such hands absolutely thrown away, and they resorted to such 
 means as were within their reach to prevent it. Among these 
 means were "charges" I forget what they were, but like all 
 charges made for such purposes, they were very complete ; in 
 fact, they were too complete. They reminded me of the campaign
 
 i8 
 
 charge made against Schuyler Colfax. Not only did this gentle- 
 man repel one-armed soldiers when they called on him, but he 
 insisted on their sending in their cards by a lackey in livery on a 
 silver salver, and when the poor soldier had no card he was sent 
 away sorrowful. I was, I remember, in Washington when the 
 charges were made. I heard of them from President Cleveland, 
 and learned from him that they must be answered. I accordingly 
 telegraphed for Mr. Pearson to come on, and he came, and Mr. 
 Dorman B. Eaton and I went to see the postmaster-general about 
 them. Pearson very soon disposed of them when he reached 
 Washington, and was then allowed to take possession of his office. 
 I saw him often during the remaining years of it, and it was a 
 great treat to see an official who was solely occupied with his 
 official duties and who knew nothing and cared nothing about 
 politics. He was interesting to me as probably the only one of the 
 few civil officers of the United States government of whom it 
 could be said that his sole preoccupation was the good of the 
 service. But no one must imagine that he lay in a bed of roses. 
 He and I were members of a small party who went together to 
 Gettysburg in 1888 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
 the battle. It was the summer before the election. He had 
 had a full trial of the place and of the tenure under which he held 
 it, and he was not cheerful. He had found himself more or less 
 during the whole of it an intruder, whose success but few political 
 men desired, and to which hardly one was willing to contribute. 
 He complained of a good deal of snubbing in high quarters, of 
 indifference to his applications for better machinery or more help, 
 and of an apparent desire to prevent such a thing as his appoint- 
 ment occurring again. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it has not occurred again. I see no sign of 
 it. His immediate successor was a livery-stable keeper, and his 
 again a lawyer, who knew nothing of post-offices except to draw 
 his mail. I have not a word to say against either of them, except 
 that they were not the stuff out of which you can make post- 
 masters. If either of them was fit for the place, then the business 
 experience of the human race must be at fault. Pearson got it 
 because he had risen to it from the ranks, because he had under- 
 gone long training for it, and because he proved by his 
 administration of it that the plan on which he was appointed 
 was the right plan. But all my talks with him, on that trip, con-
 
 '9 
 
 vinced me that it was mainly as a martyr that he was to serve the 
 cause. His health was doubtless already beginning to fail, and 
 his hopefulness, I fear, was deserting him, but there seemed no 
 abatement in his devotion to his duties. He has often reminded 
 me since of a passage in Merivale's History of the Romans, which 
 I think throws a flood of light on that perhaps most mysterious of 
 all historical questions, the question why it took the Roman 
 Empire so long to fall. Do not think I am comparing small 
 things with great, or trying to make a paradox when I quote him. 
 He says, speaking of the condition of Roman morality under the 
 Emperors : 
 
 " The history of the Caesars presents to us a constant succession 
 of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful soldiers, men deeply im- 
 pressed with the sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers of 
 boasting, content to toil in obscurity and shed their blood on the 
 frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their 
 masters, not clamorous for the honors so sparingly awarded them, 
 but satisfied in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in 
 the national destiny which they were daily accomplishing." 
 
 I have called the prolonged decay of the Roman Empire, the 
 great length of time it took to go to pieces, "mysterious," because 
 all the known and visible reasons of downfall were so marked and 
 so strong, such as the incessant and bloody contests at Rome for 
 the imperial purple, the increasing power of the military garrison 
 of the capital over government, and the increasing pressure of 
 the barbarian hordes on every frontier. Well, what made the 
 downfall of this wonderful organization so slow was undoubtedly 
 the fidelity and efficiency of the subordinate officers of the gov- 
 ernment, both civil and military. They were distinctly " out of 
 politics." The Caesars might come and go, and the purple might 
 even now and then be put to auction, and the great men at Rome 
 might betray each other and cut each other's throats as much as 
 they pleased, but all through that vast dominion, from Mount At- 
 las to Hadrian's Wall, the minor officers stuck to their posts and 
 did their duty. Justice was well administered, letters were faith- 
 fully carried, great roads, of which we see the remains to this day, 
 were made in every direction, barbarians were civilized, and great 
 cities and villages and temples arose in every province. I 
 am not defending this civilization or recommending it. I am 
 simply saying that it could not have flourished as it did, or have
 
 20 
 
 lasted as long as it did, without the extraordinary fidelity and 
 efficiency of the subordinated office-holders. 
 
 And, if I may come down to modern times for my illustrations, 
 let me say that, although the remoter causes were numerous and 
 powerful, the immediate cause of the downfall of the old French 
 monarchy was the venality and incapacity of the minor servants 
 of the crown. It was their oppression and injustice and determi- 
 nation to feather their nests which roused the peasantry to mad- 
 ness and made the Revolution bloody, for it was they, not the 
 gentry, who ruled the country districts. And I don't think I ex- 
 aggerate when I say that it was her wonderful bureaucracy, poor, 
 competent, upright, and secure, which prepared Prussia to con- 
 vert herself, when the time came, into the German Empire. A 
 more striking illustration still is the British Empire in India, 
 where millions of population are ruled in perfect peace and order 
 by a few hundred civil servants, who are selected for their ca- 
 pacity, kept in office during good behavior, and rewarded by pro- 
 motion and pensions, whose integrity as a body, although living 
 among a barbarous and subject population in remote districts, 
 has never been impeached. No more wonderful example of what 
 a civil service, organized on high principles, can do for a govern- 
 ment, was ever seen than this Indian civil service is. 
 
 I say wonderful, and yet when we consider the matter a little, 
 it is not so very wonderful after all. For we must remember that 
 the state, as an organization, is the civil service. What does any 
 of us know of the state but through its civil service ? What would 
 laws be but literature if it were not for the judges, and marshals, 
 and sheriffs, and the tax collectors, and the policemen ? They 
 represent the state to the citizen. It is through them that we get 
 at its morality and its power ; that we learn to respect or despise 
 it. It has been said, and truly said, that the millions who pour 
 into our cities from Europe, ignorant both of our laws and 
 language, learn all they know of our government and polity from 
 the police justice and police captain ; but this is in a measure true 
 of us all. We form our opinion of the government of the day 
 from what we see and know of its officers. When we determine 
 to turn one administration out and put another one in its place, it 
 is largely because we think it will give us better official service. 
 In truth, the state, apart from its officers, may be said to be merely 
 a patriot's dream. It is the civil service which makes it blood and
 
 21 
 
 bones, and which makes it palpable and concrete, lovable or un- 
 lovable, something to be proud of, or something to be ashamed 
 of. If you will ask yourselves what the things are in our politics 
 during the last thirty years which have made you either ashamed 
 or proud of your country, you will find it is the behavior of certain 
 men in the employment of the government or representing the 
 government. A state grows, flourishes, and lasts, or declines and 
 perishes through its servants. A good civil service will often ar- 
 rest the progress, for great periods, of very potent causes of decay. 
 A bad one will make the best constitution ever formed and the 
 best laws ever enacted powerless to help or save any polity, how- 
 ever just, humane, or enlightened. When we consider in what a 
 condition of mental flux we are just now upon nearly everything 
 that holds civilized men together our political economy and 
 morality and religion, what a very large population we have which 
 is American only in name, what a very large body of Americans 
 we have who care nothing about either law or political purity as 
 long as it stands in the way of their getting rich, I thing that you 
 will agree with me that we cannot be in too great haste to give 
 permanence, and the efficiency which comes from permanence, to 
 the machinery of government. We civil-service reformers have 
 been accused a good deal of making a great fuss about a very 
 small matter, but I think the events of each day show us more 
 and more clearly that our matter is the greatest of all matters ; 
 that if we are to preserve our form of government, and our social 
 organization intact, and at the same time to preserve our dignity 
 and respectability in the eyes of the world, it is to be done, not by 
 increasing our navy and our army, but by giving the govern- 
 ment the kind of service which the experience of mankind has 
 shown to be the best. And it is as an example of the kind of men 
 who should compose that service, in its higher no less than in its 
 lower branches, that I have set Henry G. Pearson before you to- 
 night.