Grant Civil Service Reform

Grant sits squarely at center, spooning gruel from a bowl labeled CIVIL SERVICE REFORM toward a shrunken, scowling Carl Schurz, who recoils like a stubborn child refusing medicine. Behind Schurz, a line of similarly dwarfed senators—including Charles Sumner—wait their reluctant turn; Lyman Trumbull, already dosed, looks queasy at left. Horace Greeley peers puzzled into the bowl. The caricature renders all opposition senators as petulant toddlers against Grant's full adult scale, a physical argument that Liberal Republican critics of Grant's reform program are infantile obstructionists rather than principled dissenters. Nast sides squarely with the administration: reform is nutritious, the senators are merely too childish to swallow it.