ield by a
disappointed office-seeker gave additional emphasis to the need for
reform, and these things coming together made possible the passage of a
civil service act earlier than its advocates expected.

President Arthur recommended the reform in 1881, and his party,
chastened by the fall election of 1882, took up a law in the session of
1882-83. Eaton, one of the leading reformers, and first chairman of the
Civil Service Commission, wrote the bill which Congress passed with
little real debate. Men who hated the measure knew the unwisdom of
opposing it. A board of three commissioners was created in 1883 to
classify the civil servants, prepare rules and lists, and conduct
examinations. The classified service, removed from politics, began with
13,780 officers in 1884; by 1896 it contained 87,044; by 1911, 227,657.
It grew most actively toward the end of each administration, as outgoing
Presidents transferred to it the offices that they had filled. Its best
recommendation was to be found in the opposition of politicians toward
it.

Arthur did better than the reformers had hoped in urging and
administering the Civil Service Act. He prosecuted the star-route
trials, even among his Stalwart friends.

In 1882 Congress, with Arthur's approval, took up a revision of the
tariff. Neither of the great parties had, in 1882, received a clear
mandate touching the tariff, although it was true that most Republicans
were content with the system in its general outlines, while a
considerable number of Democrats were listening to tariff reform and
asking for a tariff for revenue only. It had been eighteen years since
the last general revision had taken place, and in that period unforeseen
conditions had developed, whose tendency was at once to point the need
for a readjustment of schedules and to create a class of citizens whose
profits would be touched thereby. The course of financial reconstruction
between 1865 and 1875 had raised the rate of actual protection beyond
the expectations of its advocates.

In 1865 the revenues of the United States, amounting to $322,000,000,
and far exceeding the needs of the Treasury in time of peace, came
chiefly from the tariff and the internal revenue. The two taxes were
dependent upon each other. Each increase in the latter had forced an
increase in the former, lest special burdens should be laid upon
American manufacture. The ideal of protection had never been lacking,
nor had special interests f