thing worth while in the world was to get things done. He
believed with a hot conviction in decency, honesty, and
efficiency in public as in private life.

For six years he fought and infused his fellow Commissioners with
some of his fighting spirit. They were good men but easy-going
until the right leadership came along. The first effort of the
Commission under the new leadership was to secure the genuine
enforcement of the law. The backbone of the merit system was the
competitive examination. This was not because such examinations
are the infallible way to get good public servants, but because
they are the best way that has yet been devised to keep out bad
public servants, selected for private reasons having nothing to
do with the public welfare. The effort to make these examinations
and the subsequent appointments of real service to the nation
rather than to the politicians naturally brought the Commission
into conflict with many men of low ideals, both in Congress and
without. Roosevelt found a number of men in Congress--like
Senator Lodge, Senator Davis of Minnesota, Senator Platt of
Connecticut, and Congressman (afterward President) McKinley--who
were sincerely and vigorously opposed to the spoils system. But
there were numbers of other Senators and Congressmen who hated
the whole reform--everything connected with it and everybody who
championed it. "Sometimes," Roosevelt said of these men, "to use
a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause, and sometimes it was
peremptory--that is, sometimes the Commission interfered with
their most efficient, and incidentally most corrupt and
unscrupulous supporters, and at other times, where there was no
such interference, a man nevertheless had an innate dislike of
anything that tended to decency in government."