But he added that he was willing to hire the doorway to
the Half-Breeds if they paid him the additional sum of money they had
mentioned. The bargain was struck, and the meeting of the hostile hosts
was spirited, when the men who had rented the doorway sought to bar the
path of the men who had rented the hall. I was asking my friend Costigan
about the details of the struggle, as he seemed thoroughly acquainted
with them, and he smiled good-naturedly over my surprise at there having
been more votes cast than there were members of the party in the whole
district. Said I, "Mr. Costigan, you seem to have a great deal of
knowledge about this; how did it happen?" To which he replied, "Come
now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it's the same gang that votes in all the
primaries."
So much for most of the opposition to the reform. There was, however,
some honest and at least partially justifiable opposition both to
certain of the methods advocated by Civil Service Reformers and to
certain of the Civil Service Reformers themselves. The pet shibboleths
of the opponents of the reform were that the system we proposed to
introduce would give rise to mere red-tape bureaucracy, and that the
reformers were pharisees.
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