made sweeping additions. President Roosevelt found about 100,000
in the classified service and left 200,000. President Taft,
before his retirement, placed in the classified service assistant
postmasters and clerks in first and second-class postoffices,
about 42,000 rural delivery carriers, and over 20,000 skilled
workers in the navy yards.

The appointing power of the President, however, still remains the
principal point of his contact with the machine. He has, of
course, other means of showing partizan favors. Tariff laws, laws
regulating interstate commerce, reciprocity treaties, "pork
barrels," pensions, financial policies, are all pregnant with
political possibilities.

The second official unit in the national political hierarchy is
the House of Representatives, controlling the pursestrings, which
have been the deadly noose of many executive measures. The House
is elected every two years, so that it may ever be "near to the
people"! This produces a reflex not anticipated by the Fathers of
the Constitution. It gives the representative brief respite from
the necessities of politics, and hence little time for the
necessities of the State.

The House attained the zenith of its power when it arraigned
President Johnson at the bar of the Senate for high crimes and
misdemeanors in office. It had shackled his appointing power by
the Tenure of Office Act; it had forced its plan of
reconstruction over his veto; and now it led him, dogged and
defiant, to a political trial. Within a few years the character
of the House changed. A new generation interested in the issues