Conflict with these men was inevitable. Sometimes their
opposition took the form of trying to cut down the appropriation
for the Commission.

Then the Commission, on Roosevelt's suggestion, would try the
effect of holding no examinations in the districts of the
Senators or Congressmen who had voted against the appropriation.
The response from the districts was instantaneous. Frantic
appeals came to the Commission from aspirants for office. The
reply would be suave and courteous. One can imagine Roosevelt
dictating it with a glint in his eye and a snap of the jaw, and
when it was typed, inserting a sting in the tail in the form of
an interpolated sentence in his own vigorous and rugged script.
Those added sentences, without which any typewritten Roosevelt
letter might almost be declared to be a forgery, so uniformly did
the impulse to add them seize him, were always the most
interesting feature of a communication from him. The letter would
inform the protesting one that unfortunately the appropriation
had been cut, so that examinations could not be held in every
district, and that obviously the Commission could not neglect the
districts of those Congressmen who believed in the reform and
therefore in the examinations. The logical next step for the
hungry aspirant was to transfer the attack to his Congressman or
Senator. In the long run, by this simple device of backfiring,
which may well have been a reminiscence of prairie fire days in
the West, the Commission obtained enough money to carry on.

There were other forms of attack tried by the spoils-loving
legislators. One was investigation by a congressional committee.