The "spoils system" of making Federal offices the reward for partisan services began to draw a strong fire of criticism in Grant's first administration. It was natural that the Democrats should view with disfavor a practice which excluded them entirely from serving their country in an official capacity, and the reformers regarded it as a menace to American institutions because it was the basis of a "political machine" which controlled primaries and elections and shut out the discussion of real issues. In response to this combined attack, Congress passed in 1871 a law authorizing the President to prescribe regulations for admission to the civil service and provide methods for ascertaining the fitness of candidates--a law which promised well while the distinguished champion of reform, George William Curtis, was head of the board in charge of its administration. Congress, however, had accepted the reform reluctantly and refused to give it adequate financial support. After two years' experience with the law, Curtis resigned, and within a short time the whole scheme fell to the ground. The reformers, however, did not give up hope, for they were sufficiently strong to compel the respect of the Democrats, and the latter, by their insistence on a reform that cost them nothing, forced the Republicans to give the merit system some prominence in their campaign promises. But practical politicians in both parties had small esteem for a plan that would take away the incentive to work for victory on the part of their followers. It was scornfully called "snivel service" and "goody-goody reform"; and the old practices of distributing offices to henchmen and raising campaign funds by heavy assessments on officeholders were continued. Never was the spoils system more odious than when the assassination of Garfield by a disappointed office hunter startled the country from its apathy. Within a year, a Senate committee had reported favorably on a civil service reform bill. It declared that the President had to wear his life out giving audiences to throngs of beggars who besieged the executive mansion, and that the spectacle of the chief magistrate of the nation dispensing patronage to "a hungry, clamorous, crowding, and jostling multitude" was humiliating to the patriotic citizen. And with the Congressman the system "is ever present. When he awakes in the morning it is at his door, and when he retires at night it haunts his chamber. It goes before him, it follows after him, and it meets him on the way." The only relief, concluded the report, was to be found in a thoroughgoing merit system of appointing civil servants.