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By Root 3260 0

Harrison’s request for more money for the Commission met with determined opposition and delay. Meanwhile the agency was so short of clerks it had fallen three months behind in the marking of examination papers. “No department of the Government is run with such absolutely insufficient means as ours,” Roosevelt complained to a Congressman, “and I may say also that no officers of corresponding rank to that of the Civil Service Commissioners are so insufficiently paid.”121 But the House was more interested in Frank Hatton’s now almost daily editorials charging the Commissioners with inefficiency, corruption, and abuse of the law. While trumpeting the Roosevelt/Shidy affair as evidence of gross favoritism, Hatton also accused Commissioner Lyman of employing a relative who trafficked in stolen examination questions. Clearly something had to be done, and on 27 January Congress ordered a full investigation by the House Committee on Reform in the Civil Service. A prominent spoilsman, Representative Hamilton G. Ewart of South Carolina, was appointed prosecutor, and Frank Hatton chosen to assist him.122

AS ALWAYS WHEN CONFRONTED with a challenge, Roosevelt instantly took the offensive. He intended so to dominate the hearings that he would be entirely vindicated, and confirmed in the public mind as leader of a just and effective agency. At the preliminary hearing he insisted that any charges against him be separate from those involving Commissioner Lyman. While assuring the committee—repeatedly—that he was “dee-lighted” to be investigated, he “did not want to be tried for other people’s faults.”123 This was hardly a compliment to his senior colleagues, but instinct told him that Lyman’s case was more embarrassing than his own. Frank Hatton, coming face to face with Roosevelt for the first time, was clearly overawed by his pugnacious gestures and snapping teeth. Afterward the editor announced that he had nothing against Roosevelt personally; he merely wished to expose the weaknesses of the Civil Service Commission as presently constituted. Should the agency be reorganized with only one man at its head, “he would be very glad to see Mr. Roosevelt appointed.”124

The hearings proper began on 19 February, with a reading of twelve charges indicting the Civil Service Commission of various faults of management and failure to uphold the law. The fourth alleged

… that Theodore Roosevelt, a member of the Commission, secured the appointment of one Hamilton Shidy to a place in the Census Bureau, when it was notoriously known to the said Roosevelt that the said Shidy … had persistently and repeatedly violated his oath of office in making false certifications and in not reporting violations of the Civil Service law by the postmaster at Milwaukee to the Commission at Washington.125

Thanks to a prolonged examination of the charge against Commissioner Lyman, which Roosevelt listened to looking as if he had a bad smell under his nose,126 his own case did not come up for another week. Finally, on the afternoon of Friday, 28 February, Hamilton Shidy was sworn in.

The hapless clerk confirmed that Roosevelt had promised him protection in exchange for testimony against Postmaster Paul in June 1889. Subsequently “I obtained a position in the Census Office … Mr. Roosevelt being particularly friendly and kindly to me in that respect.”127 Sniggers were heard in various parts of the room. Hatton, cross-examining the witness, tricked him into admitting that if he was again asked by a corrupt superior to falsify government records, he would again do so. This was a blow to Roosevelt, who had hoped that Shidy’s moral character would stand up to scrutiny. “I do not care to talk to you any more,” he told him afterward. “You have cut your own throat.”128

Hatton made the most of Roosevelt’s discomfiture in huge, front-page headlines next morning:

SHIDY PROVES TO BE BOTH A SCOUNDREL

AND A FOOL—

And Roosevelt, knowing his Infamous Character, Forced him into an Important Position

THE MOST SHAMEFUL TESTIMONY EVER OFFERED

Even Roosevelt Hung his Head in