President Jackson’s administration speedily gave discerning men an opportunity to measure the standards and ideals of the newly enfranchised voters. He and they considered the public offices as loot to be distributed among party workers. With the cry of “To the victors belong the spoils” the beneficiaries of universal suffrage began the work of plunder and misrule which they have ever since continued. Jackson and Van Buren--a slick politician--became the leaders of the mobocratic movement, which they called “democratic,” and the demand for offices became its war cry. In his first presidential message Jackson proclaimed “that every citizen has a right to share in the emoluments of the public service,” an ardent bid for the support of the worthless class of men recently granted the vote. We can easily imagine what creatures they were. In that early time in a new country, with opportunity knocking at every man’s door, work to be had for the asking, large farms given by the government free to settlers, with every inducement to an honest man to follow an industrious calling, they preferred to loaf around corners, to infest barrooms, to become members of gangs of political rowdies, to beg, bully and coax for petty offices. Too lazy or incompetent, or both, to accumulate or even to retain the small amount of property needed to qualify them as voters, their only ambition was by fair or foul means to live off the community with the least possible exertion. After Jackson’s inauguration in March 1829, as we are told by Ostrogorski: “The vast popular army which marched triumphantly through the streets of Washington dispersed to their homes, but one of its divisions remained, the corps of marauders which followed it. This was composed of the politicians. They wanted their spoils. The victory was due to their efforts and as the laborer is worthy of his hire, they deserved a reward. By way of remuneration for their services, they demanded places in the administration. They filled the air of Washington like locusts, they swarmed in the halls and lobbies of the public buildings, in the adjoining streets they besieged the residences of Jackson and his ministers.” (_Democracy and the Party System in the United States._, p. 21.) “It was” (says Schurz) “as if a victorious army had come to take possession of a conquered country, expecting their general to distribute among them the spoil of the land. A spectacle was enacted never before known in the capital of the Republic.” (_Life of Clay_, Vol. I, p. 334.) “A new force, compounded in about equal proportions of corruption and savagery, was soon made potential, alike in the battle fields of politics, in the methods of election and in the processes of administration.” (Lalor’s _Cyclopedia_; Spoils System.)