The best history of civil service reform is C.R. Fish, _The Civil Service and the Patronage_ (1905). This supplants all previous accounts, and may itself be supplemented in detail by the Annual Reports of the United States Civil Service Commission (1883-), by the _Memoirs of Carl Schurz_ (3 vols., 1907-08), the _Writings of Carl Schurz_ (7 vols., Frederic Bancroft, _ed._, 1912), the biographies of J.R. Lowell, E.L. Godkin, and George William Curtis, and the files of _Harper's Weekly_, the _Nation_, and the _North American Review_. The general narrative of the eighties is covered by E.E. Sparks, _National Development_, and D.R. Dewey, _National Problems_ (in _The American Nation_, vols. 23 and 24, 1907), and E.B. Andrews, _The United States in Our Own Time_. A thoughtful economic analysis of the period is D.A. Wells, _Recent Economic Changes_ (1890). The Report of the Tariff Commission of 1882 is valuable for the study of tariff revision, as are also the standard tariff histories by E. Stanwood, I.M. Tarbell, and F.W. Taussig. The Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Labor (1884-) are fundamental for the labor problem. Useful monographs are C.D. Wright, _An Historical Sketch of the Knights of Labor_ (in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, vol. I), T.V. Powderly, _Thirty Years of Labor_ (1889), G.E. McNeill, _The Labor Movement_ (1887), and M.A. Aldrich, _The American Federation of Labor_ (in American Economic Association, Economic Studies, vol. III). CHAPTER VIII GROVER CLEVELAND The Administration of Chester A. Arthur proved that the President had never been so discreditable a spoilsman as the reformers had believed, or else that he had changed his spots. The term ended in dignity and Arthur hoped to secure a personal vindication through renomination by his party. His struggle precipitated a contest of leaders, and until the nominations were made, none could say where either party stood. The independents, chiefly of Republican antecedents, hoped to retain what had been gained in the last Administration. They hoped to extend the reform in the civil service and to focus attention upon the tariff. The failure of downward revision in 1883 had strengthened their hands and increased their hopes. They had dallied with bolting movements and threats so long that party regularity meant little to them. Either party could obtain their support by nominating men who could be trusted to stick to their platform. Arthur was not acceptable to them, and Blaine was anathema.