IMMIGRATION SERVICE

and recriminations were flying back and forth, and the Ellis Island station and the bureau in Washington were pulling so constantly in opposite directions that the service was becoming demoralized.

The President resolved to apply his favorite panacea for such difficulties, a clean sweep. Powderly appealed to Quay, and Quay to the President. Meanwhile the friends of Fitchie and McSweeney, including not only Mr. Platt but Mr. Lodge and some of the other Senators who were most intimate personally with Mr. Roosevelt, were aroused in his behalf. The air fairly shook with the din of battle. The President, however, refused to be moved from the position he had taken. He had comparatively little difficulty in dealing with the Washington end of the complication, for the labor organizations, in whose interest Powderly had been appointed, were well satisfied with the choice of Frank P. Sargent, chief of the Brotherhood of Railway Firemen, to succeed him; but at the New York end there was serious trouble in finding just the man required to take charge of the station. The work there was bound to be disagreeable if faithfully performed; resourcefulness, tact, humanity, pa

tience, were as essential as honesty, and the compensation was pitifully small. The President went over nearly the entire list of his personal friends who possessed the necessary traits combined with an independent income, but he could find none whose patriotic altruism seemed equal to the test.

At last an acquaintance who had been called to aid in the search suggested the name of William Williams, a lawyer of good repute, young enough to adapt himself to the task, and with the grit to undertake a public service in which the duties were hard and the rewards few and uncertain. He was appointed commissioner, and the President's old friend Joseph E. Murray, who had been employed at the station once before, was installed as deputy. The former system, under which the chief of the office was the nominal and his assistant the active administrator, was reversed, and a place which had been a political snug harbor was swept, garnished, and set in running order on a strict merit basis.

CHAPTER IX

SOME OF THE OTHER BOSSES

State dictators in the Senate-Quay and his machine-The typical case of McClain and McCoach-Cold comfort for warring bosses-Addicksism, Byrne, and Miss Todd.

THE Republican bosses in the United States Senate, as we see their names paraded in the newspapers, are Platt of New York, Quay of Pennsylvania, Hanna of Ohio, Burton of Kansas, and a handful of lesser dignitaries. Hanna's bossism is held somewhat in check by the opposition of his colleague, Senator Foraker, and by the paramount boss-ship of the "King of Cincinnati," George B. Cox. Burton is comparatively little known in the East. Platt and Quay are the pair who challenge most attention from the average opponent of bossism on principle. He never can understand how a virtuous President can maintain any relations, personal or otherwise, with such men. On the other hand, the President feels that if his critics could stand in his place for a while and get a

view of the whole situation instead of a single part they would be less severe in their judgments.

The Quay machine in Pennsylvania was disagreeably in evidence during the early part of the Roosevelt administration, to the consternation of the anti-Quay Republicans and Independents. William H. Hicks, postmaster of Philadelphia, against whom the CivilService Commission had reported to President McKinley after an investigation of charges preferred through the agency of some of Mr. Quay's lieutenants, was dropped from his office. The same sort of negotiation was opened with Senators Quay and Penrose as we have seen conducted with Mr. Platt. The Senators were informed that the President had no disposition to quarrel with them, and that he would name a postmaster acceptable to them if they would settle upon a man who was unexceptionable personally. After some beating of the bushes, their choice finally fell upon Clayton McMichael, a member of a highly respectable Philadelphia family, but one always associated in public affairs with the organization now controlled by Quay. Internal Revenue Collector McClain gave way in like manner to one

MCCLAIN AND McCOACH

of Quay's most consistent and serviceable followers, William McCoach.

The Pennsylvania reformers generally were willing to ignore the McMichael appointment in view of the attitude of the Civil-Service Commission toward Hicks, but against the change from McClain to McCoach they revolted, McCoach having won their hostility by his career as one of the city fathers of Philadelphia. The version of the incident which found its way into the press was that the President had notified McClain, whose first four years were about expiring, that it would not be worth while to renew his official bond, as McCoach had been promised the collectorship-all because McClain had bolted the regular Republican ticket at the late municipal election, and the Administration intended to "send bolters to the rear and keep none but stanch party men in office thereafter!"

The absurdity of such a statement of the attitude of a man who has all his life insisted on the divorce of municipal from national politics hardly calls for serious comment; but justice demands that the truth have at least an equal showing with the falsehood. The first time this question arose during his term Presi