This course was consistently followed by the Commission throughout my connection with it. I was myself a Republican from the North. Messrs. Thompson and Procter were from the South, and were both Democrats who had served in the Confederate armies; and it would be impossible for anyone to desire as associates two public men with higher ideals of duty, or more resolute in their adherence to those ideals. It is unnecessary to say that in all our dealings there was no single instance wherein the politics of any person or the political significance of any action was so much as taken into account in any case that arose. The force of the Commission itself was all chosen through the competitive examinations, and included men of every party and from every section of the country; and I do not believe that in any public or private office of the size it would be possible to find a more honest, efficient, and coherent body of workers. From the beginning of the present system each President of the United States has been its friend, but no President has been a radical Civil Service reformer. Presidents Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland have all desired to see the service extended, and to see the law well administered. No one of them has felt willing or able to do all that the reformers asked, or to pay much heed to their wishes save as regards that portion of the service to which the law actually applied. Each has been a sincere party man, who has felt strongly on such questions as those of the tariff, of finance, and of our foreign policy, and each has been obliged to conform more or less closely to the wishes of his party associates and fellow party leaders; and, of course, these party leaders, and the party politicians generally, wished the offices to be distributed as they had been ever since Andrew Jackson became President. In consequence the offices outside the protection of the law have still been treated, under every administration, as patronage, to be disposed of in the interest of the dominant party. An occasional exception was made here and there. The postmaster at New York, a Republican, was retained by President Cleveland in his first administration, and the postmaster of Charleston, a Democrat, was retained by President Harrison; but, with altogether insignificant exceptions, the great bulk of the non-classified places have been changed for political reasons by each administration, the office-holders politically opposed to the administration being supplanted or succeeded by political adherents of the administration.