These commissions by their reports and findings directly interfered with many place-holders who were doing inefficient work, and their reports and the action taken thereon by the Administration strengthened the hands of those administrative officers who in the various departments, and especially in the Secret Service, were proceeding against land thieves and other corrupt wrong-doers.

Moreover, the mere fact that they did efficient work for the public along lines new to veteran and cynical politicians of the old type created vehement hostility to them.

Senators like Mr.
Hale and Congressmen like Mr.Tawney were especially bitter against these commissions; and towards the end of my term they were followed by the majority of their fellows in both houses, who had gradually been sundered from me by the open or covert hostility of the financial or Wall Street leaders, and of the newspaper editors and politicians who did their bidding in the interest of privilege.

These Senators and Congressmen asserted that they had a right to forbid the President profiting by the unpaid advice of disinterested experts.

Of course I declined to admit the existence of any such right, and continued the Commissions.