Public attention was focused upon the civil service by the events of 1881. The fight between Garfield and Conkling raised not only the question of the relative rights of President and Senate in appointments, but that of the use of offices for the support of political machines. The frauds uncovered in postal administration by the star-route investigations could hardly have occurred in a department administered by experienced and competent officials. The murder of Garfield by a disappointed office-seeker gave additional emphasis to the need for reform, and these things coming together made possible the passage of a civil service act earlier than its advocates expected. President Arthur recommended the reform in 1881, and his party, chastened by the fall election of 1882, took up a law in the session of 1882-83. Eaton, one of the leading reformers, and first chairman of the Civil Service Commission, wrote the bill which Congress passed with little real debate. Men who hated the measure knew the unwisdom of opposing it. A board of three commissioners was created in 1883 to classify the civil servants, prepare rules and lists, and conduct examinations. The classified service, removed from politics, began with 13,780 officers in 1884; by 1896 it contained 87,044; by 1911, 227,657. It grew most actively toward the end of each administration, as outgoing Presidents transferred to it the offices that they had filled. Its best recommendation was to be found in the opposition of politicians toward it. Arthur did better than the reformers had hoped in urging and administering the Civil Service Act. He prosecuted the star-route trials, even among his Stalwart friends. In 1882 Congress, with Arthur's approval, took up a revision of the tariff. Neither of the great parties had, in 1882, received a clear mandate touching the tariff, although it was true that most Republicans were content with the system in its general outlines, while a considerable number of Democrats were listening to tariff reform and asking for a tariff for revenue only. It had been eighteen years since the last general revision had taken place, and in that period unforeseen conditions had developed, whose tendency was at once to point the need for a readjustment of schedules and to create a class of citizens whose profits would be touched thereby. The course of financial reconstruction between 1865 and 1875 had raised the rate of actual protection beyond the expectations of its advocates.