THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR'S OFFICE.
While the investigating mania was at its height, the House Committee on the Expenditures of the Interior Department determined to look into his books and business system. He accordingly received from them a formal letter asking what time would be convenient for the investigation. The Chief Clerk submitted this communication to Mr. Chandler, who said, "Tell them to come down any day, and I want you to put the best room we have at their disposal, and give them all the facilities you can to investigate the affairs of any bureau of the Department that they want to look into. If they can find anything wrong that I haven't found, I shall be very much obliged to them. They will be pumping a dry well. The work is done." The committee came, but only held a few brief sessions, and finally never concluded their labors and never made a report in relation thereto.
Active as were Mr. Chandler's party sympathies, and little disposed as he was to consult his political opponents as to his course, or to admit them to any share in the patronage at his disposal, he did not manage the Department upon merely partisan principles. He did not make removals of Democratic subordinates except for cause; he never appointed any Republican whom he did not believe to be thoroughly upright and competent. That to fill any vacancy he always sought to find the right kind of Republican was true. His civil service theories stopped with honesty and efficiency, and did not exclude pronounced political sympathy with the appointing power nor party activity. Still, he did not on any occasion enforce the payment of political assessments by his subordinates, and their work for the Republican cause was left voluntary in character. The nearest approach to mere partisanship in his use of the appointing power was the giving of places in the Department to crippled soldiers who had been discharged from the employment of the House of Representatives by the Democratic Door-keeper, and even in that it was far more the indignation of the patriot than of the Republican that stirred him. At the close of Mr. Chandler's Secretaryship, the clerks of the Department waited upon him in a body, and thanked him for the kindness they had received at his hands. While farewells were being exchanged Mr. Schurz, the new Secretary, came in and was introduced to his staff of subordinates. Mr. Chandler then said:
Mr. Secretary, I welcome you to this office. When I came here this Department was greatly tainted with corruption, especially in the Patent Office and the Indian Bureau. With the aid of the gentlemen you see around you, I have been able to cleanse it, and I believe, as far as I am able to ascertain, that no abuses exist in the bureaux I have named. I had to use the knife freely, and I believe this Department stands to-day the peer of any department of the government.
Mr. Chandler further commended the corps of employes as honest, faithful men, and Mr. Schurz replied:
I think I am expressing the general opinion of the country when I say you have succeeded in placing the Interior Department in far better condition than it had been in for years, and that the public is indebted to you for the very energetic and successful work you have performed. I enter upon the arduous duties with which I have been entrusted with an earnest desire to discharge them conscientiously, and I shall be happy when leaving the Department to have achieved as good a reputation for practical efficiency as you have won. I thank you, sir, for this cordial welcome, and I will say to the gentlemen to whom you have introduced me that they shall have my protection; and I ask from them the same faithful assistance they have given you.
The tribute which Secretary Schurz at the outset thus paid to the practical efficiency of his predecessor merely expressed the public verdict which greeted the close of Mr. Chandler's term. Examination did not compel any modifying of this praise, and after Mr. Chandler's death his successor in the Interior Department—a man very exacting in judgment and one with whom his political differences had been numerous—again said: "In the course of the last two years I have frequently discovered in the transaction of public business traces of his good judgment and his energetic determination to do what was right."