Roosevelt acted on the principle that the office holder who
swears to carry out a law must do this without hesitation or
demur. If the law is good, enforcing it will make its goodness
apparent to everybody; if it is bad, it will become the more
quickly odious and need to be repealed. Roosevelt enforced the
Civil Service Law with the utmost rigor. It called for the
examination of candidates for office, and the examiners paid some
heed to their moral fitness. Its opponents tried to stir up
public opinion against it by circulating what purported to be
some of its examination papers. Why, they asked, should a man who
wished to be a letter-carrier in Keokuk, be required to give a
list of the Presidents of the United States? Or what was the
shortest route for a letter going from Bombay to Yokohama? By
these and similar spurious questions the spoilsmen hoped to get
rid of the reformers. But "shrewd slander," as Roosevelt called
it, could not move him. Two specimen cases will suffice to show
how he reduced shrewd slanderers to confusion.
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