Iron County Register

A REFORMER'S PLAINT.

He Criminates His Own Party of Deliberate Treachery.

Reformer Foulke tells the Hale committee that "there has not been any Civil-Service reform in Indiana." If by Civil-Service reform Mr. Foulke means that no Republicans are retained in the Government service in Indiana, he says what is not true. There are a good many of them, including not a few who are active and conspicuous in their partisanship, and should be removed in the interest of real Civil-Service reform.

But admitting, for the sake of argument, that there has been no Civil-Service reform in Indiana, as asserted by Mr. Foulke, we should like to know what party is most at fault. For twenty-four years the Government patronage was entirely in the hands of Mr. Foulke's party. During at least half of this time it stood committed by its platform and the solemn pledges of its leaders to a reform of the civil service. In the last two years of its control of the Government there was a Civil-Service law on the statute books. If, then, there has been no Civil-Service reform in Indiana, the responsibility rests mainly with the party which Mr. Foulke is trying by such desperate methods to restore to power.

He himself says that all the post office employes displaced by Mr. Jones were Republicans. How came they to be all Republicans? The Civil-Service law was in force several years before Mr. Jones became postmaster. How comes it that he found no Democrats in the post-office when he took possession? Can Reformer Foulke explain?

The fact is that, in trying to make out a case against the Democratic party, Mr. Foulke has succeeded in criminating his own party of deliberate, systematic and long-continued treachery to the cause which he professes to have so much at heart. The Republican party, when it was in power, never took the first step toward reforming the civil service. On the contrary, it prostituted it to the base uses of partyism to an extent never before known in the history of the Government. Wherever it has the power to-day it pursues the same policy. It has done more to debauch the civil service, not only of the United States, but of States and cities and towns than all the other political organizations that ever flourished in this country put together. It doesn't lie in the mouth of a man who is trying to reinstate this corrupt party in possession of the National Government to accuse the Democratic party of recreancy to Civil-Service reform.

—Indianapolis Sentinel.