He found the law struggling for existence, laughed at, sneered at, surrounded by enemies in Congress, and with but few fighting friends. He threw himself into the fray. Congress investigated the commission about once a year, which was exactly what Roosevelt desired. Annually, too, the opponents of the reform would try to defeat the appropriation for the commission, and this again was playing into Roosevelt's hands, for it led to debates, and the newspapers as a rule sustained the reform. Senator Gorman mourned in the Senate over the cruel fate of a "bright young man" who was unable to tell on examination the distance of Baltimore from China, and thus was deprived of his inalienable right to serve his country in the post office. Roosevelt proved that no such question had ever been asked and requested the name of the "bright young man." The name was not forthcoming, and the victim of a question never asked goes down nameless to posterity in the Congressional Record as merely a "bright young man." Then General Grosvenor, a leading Republican of the House, denounced the commissioner for crediting his district with an appointee named Rufus Putnam who was not a resident of the district, and Roosevelt produced a letter from the general recommending Rufus Putnam as a resident of his district and a constituent. All this was unusual. Hitherto it had been a safe amusement to ridicule and jeer at civil-service reform, and here was a commissioner who dared to reply vigorously to attacks, and even to prove Senators and Congressmen to be wrong in their facts. The amusement of baiting the Civil Service Commission seemed to be less inviting than before, and, worse still, the entertaining features seemed to have passed to the public, who enjoyed and approved the commissioner who disregarded etiquette and fought hard for the law he was appointed to enforce. The law suddenly took on new meaning and became clearly visible in the public mind, a great service to the cause of good government.