CIVIL SERVICE RETIREMENT
Before increasing the business activities of the government and
creating an enormous army of government officials, clerks and
employees, all under Civil Service, it is well to consider some
feasible plan of retirement, for it is a question that will not
down.
The discussion of Civil Service as applied to governmental industrial
operations will be incomplete unless it includes the question of
retirement. Shall those who have been for many years on the government
payroll be pensioned? With few exceptions that is what the present
Civil Service employees desire. They claim to have served their country
as faithfully, and much longer, than soldiers in the army, and
therefore are entitled to equal recognition and honor.
Most thoughtful people are able to note some marked differences. Few
who are physically fit fail when they seek admission to the army or
navy, but I have known quite a number who have sought government
positions in vain. In addition to this the pay of the soldier is very
meagre, while that of civil service clerks, in normal times, is at
least fifty per cent higher than the same grade of service commands in
the business world. The question resolves itself therefore into this
proposition: Shall those who have secured government positions and held
them for thirty years, when there have been thirty thousand other
citizens equally patriotic, and equally competent, who have sought
government employment in vain, be rewarded and pensioned because of
their good fortune, and at the expense of their less favored brothers
and sisters?
The same argument applies to old age pensions. Most red-blooded
Americans are willing to assume responsibility for the support of
themselves and their families, and gladly contribute in some fair and
equitable manner, through appropriate processes of taxation, towards
pensioning those who bear arms in defense of our common flag, and for
the dignity of our country, and they are also willing to pay their
share towards the maintenance of the helpless and the unfortunate few.
But it is no evidence of yellow that some object to the burden of
paying pensions to men and women who have no other claim thereto than
that they have grown old and have failed to provide for themselves.
Take the case home and apply it to yourself and your family. Do you
desire the government to promise you and your children a pension
independent of the manner in which you and they acquit yourselves? Or
would you prefer to face the future in the belief that if you win,
through merit, the rewards of victory will be yours to enjoy, and if
you lose you will be expected to suffer the consequences. In other
words do you desire the government to pension you simply because you
hold a poor hand or play a good hand badly? What effect do you think
the promise of old age pension would have upon the rising generation?
Is not the youth of America already sufficiently wanting in
self-reliance?
The only other way thus far proposed by which the government shall
support its employees in old age, is by means of guardianship. This
plan seems to proceed upon the theory that those who are fortunate
enough to secure government positions, are necessarily unable to look
after their own affairs, and therefore are entitled to a guardian. The
proposition is that the government shall take charge of a portion of
the earnings of this favored set of American citizens—withhold part of
their salary and deal it out to them as a mother does candy to her baby
lest it overeat or consume it too soon. It is a pretty weak citizen who
needs a guardian, and those who do—provided they are _compos mentis_
and fourteen years of age—are entitled under the laws of most states
to select their own.
Five years’ experience led me to recognize that new clerks as a rule
are better than old ones. Those who come with any enthusiasm whatever
make very rapid advancement in efficiency, but in a very few years the
enthusiasm vanishes and hope of advancement is based entirely on
seniority of service.
Before leaving the Department I recommended—and am now more convinced
than ever of its wisdom—that government positions should be filled, as
now, under the rules of Civil Service but that all new clerks should
come facing a statute limiting the periods of their service to five
years. Five years of government service, especially in the city of
Washington, is in itself an education. In addition there are excellent
night schools where clerks can and do pursue their studies. Before
Civil Service was inaugurated thousands secured appointments in
Washington, graduated in law or medicine and went forth familiar with
the official atmosphere and prepared to give the lie to those in every
town who teach that the Capitol of the Nation is a den of thieves. John
W. Gates got his start in life as a sixty dollar per month clerk in the
Post Office Department and spent his evenings writing letters for
Senator John A. Logan, and meeting the big men of the nation who called.
A limited period in college is of great advantage but it would ruin any
boy to keep him year after year in the same classes, going over the
same subjects, reciting to the same tutors, getting nothing new and all
the while segregated from all practical things of life. Why give these
plums of official position—and they are no less plums because secured
under Civil Service—to young men and women for life when they might be
passed around with great advantage to that larger body of equally
deserving citizens who would be benefited by a brief experience in
public service.
The present force should be permitted to complete the tenor of their
natural lives in the service. The new rule if adopted should apply only
to those taken on after the enactment of the law limiting the period of
service to five years. Exceptions would have to be made in cases
requiring technical, professional or scientific knowledge. Provision
would also have to be made whereby by executive order, on the
recommendation of heads of departments, the specially competent could
be retained.