His experience had been chiefly that of frontier life, in which the utmost freedom of economic and social movement was necessary; and he attempted to apply the results of this limited experience to the government of a complicated social organism whose different parts had very different needs.

The direct results of the attempt were very mischievous.

He fastened upon the American public service a system of appointment which turned political office into the reward of partisan service, which made it unnecessary for the public officials to be competent and impossible for them to be properly experienced, and which contributed finally to the creation of a class of office-holding politicians.

But the introduction of the spoils system had a meaning superior to its results.

It was, after all, an attempt to realize an ideal, and the ideal was based on a genuine experience.