Look down beneath the surface and you can trace everything wrong to civil service.
I have studied the subject and I know.

The civil service humbug is underminin' our institutions and if a halt ain't called soon this great republic will tumble down like a Park Avenue house when they were buildin' the subway, and on its ruins will rise another Russian government.
This is an awful serious proposition.

Free silver and the tariff and imperialism and the Panama Canal are triflin' issues when compared to it.

We could worry along without any of these things, but civil service is sappin' the foundation of the whole shootin' match, let me argue it out for you.

I ain't up on sillygisms, but I can give you some arguments that nobody can answer.
First, this great and glorious country was built up by political parties; second, parties can't hold together if their workers don't get the offices when they win; third, if the parties go to pieces, the government they built up must go to pieces, too; fourth, then there'll be h---- to pay.
Could anything be clearer than that?
Say, honest now; can you answer that argument?
Of course you won't deny that the government was built up by the great parties.