is not difficult to determine what the principle of reform legislation
should be if we can agree upon the source of the abuses to be reformed.
May they not have a common origin? In fact, are they not all bound
together as parts of one system? The Representative in Congress, for
instance, does not ask whether the interests of the public service
require this removal or that appointment, but whether, directly or
indirectly, either will best serve his own interests. The Senator acts
from the same motives. The President, in turn, balances between the
personal interests of leading politicians--President, Senators,
and Representatives all wishing to pay for personal service and to
conciliate personal influence. So also the party labor required of the
place-holder, the task of carrying caucuses, of defeating one man and
electing another, as may be ordered, the payment of the assessment
levied upon his salary--all these are the price of the place. They are
the taxes paid by him as conditions of receiving a personal favor. Thus
the abuses have a common source, whatever may be the plea for the system
from which they spring. Whether it be urged that the system is essential
to party organization, or that the desire for place is a laudable
political ambition, or that the Spoils System is a logical development
of our political philosophy, or that new brooms sweep clean, or that
any other system is un-American--whatever the form of the plea for the
abuse, the conclusion is always the same, that the minor places in the
Civil Service are not public trusts, but rewards and prizes for personal
and political favorites.
The root of the complex evil, then, is personal favoritism. This
produces congressional dictation, senatorial usurpation, arbitrary
removals, interference in elections, political assessments, and all
the consequent corruption, degradation, and danger that experience has
disclosed. The method of reform, therefore, must be a plan of selection
for appointment which makes favoritism impossible. The general feeling
undoubtedly is that this can be accomplished by a fixed limited term.
But the terms of most of the offices to which the President and the
Senate appoint, and upon which the myriad minor places in the service
depend, have been fixed and limited for sixty years, yet it is during
that very period that the chief evils of personal patronage have
appeared. The law of 1820, which limited the term of important revenue
offices to four years, and which was afterwards extended to other
offices, was intended, as John Quincy Adams tells us, to promote the
election to the presidency of Mr. Crawford, who was then Secretary of
the Treasury. The law was drawn by Mr. Crawford himself, and it was
introduced into the Senate by one of his devoted partisans. It placed
the whole body of executive financial officers at the mercy of the
Secretary of the Treasury and of a majority of the Senate, and its
design, as Mr. Adams says, "was to secure for Mr. Crawford the influence
of all the incumbents in office, at the peril of displacement, and of
five or ten times an equal number of ravenous office-seekers, eager
to supplant them." This is the very substance of the Spoils System,
intentionally introduced by a fixed limitation of term in place of the
constitutional tenure of efficient service; and it was so far successful
that it made the custom-house officers, district attorneys, marshals,
registers of the land-office, receivers of public money, and even
paymasters in the army, notoriously active partisans of Mr. Crawford.
Mr. Benton says that the four-years' law merely made the dismissal
of faithful officers easier, because the expiration of the term
was regarded as "the creation of a vacancy to be filled by new
appointments." A fixed limited term for the chief offices has not
destroyed or modified personal influence, but, on the contrary, it
has fostered universal servility and loss of self-respect, because
reappointment depends, not upon official fidelity and efficiency, but
upon personal influence and favor. To fix by law the terms of places
dependent upon such offices would be like an attempt to cure hydrophobia
by the bite of a mad dog. The incumbent would be always busy keeping his
influence in repair to secure reappointment, and the applicant would be
equally busy in seeking such influence to procure the place, and as the
fixed terms would be constantly expiring, the eager and angry intrigue
and contest of influence would be as endless as it is now. This
certainly would not be reform.
But would not reform be secured by adding to a fixed limited term the
safeguard of removal for cause only? Removal for cause alone means, of
course, removal for legitimate cause, such as dishonesty, negligence,
or incapacity. But who shall decide that such cause exists? This must be
determined either by the responsible superior officer or by some other
authority. But if left to some other authority the right of counsel
and the forms of a court would be invoked; the whole legal machinery of
mandamuses, injunctions, _certioraris_, and the rules of evidence would
be put in play to keep an incompetent clerk at his desk or a sleepy
watchman on his beat. Cause for the removal of a letter-carrier in the
post-office or of an accountant in the custom-house would be presented
with all the pomp of impeachment and established like a high crime
and misdemeanor. Thus every clerk in every office would have a kind of
vested interest in his place because, however careless, slovenly, or
troublesome he might be, he could be displaced only by an elaborate
and doubtful legal process. Moreover, if the head of a bureau or
a collector, or a postmaster were obliged to prove negligence, or
insolence, or incompetency against a clerk as he would prove theft,
there would be no removals from the public service except for crimes
of which the penal law takes cognizance. Consequently, removal would be
always and justly regarded as a stigma upon character, and a man removed
from a position in a public office would be virtually branded as a
convicted criminal. Removal for cause, therefore, if the cause were
to be decided by any authority but that of the responsible superior
officer, instead of improving, would swiftly and enormously enhance
the cost, and ruin the efficiency, of the public service, by destroying
subordination, and making every lazy and worthless member of it twice as
careless and incompetent as he is now.
If, then, the legitimate cause for removal ought to be determined in
public as in private business by the responsible appointing power, it is
of the highest public necessity that the exercise of that power should
be made as absolutely honest and independent as possible. But how can
it be made honest and independent if it is not protected so far as
practicable from the constant bribery of selfish interest and the
illicit solicitation of personal influence? The experience of our large
patronage offices proves conclusively that the cause of the larger
number of removals is not dishonesty or incompetency; it is the desire
to make vacancies to fill. This is the actual cause, whatever cause may
be assigned. The removals would not be made except for the pressure of
politicians. But those politicians would not press for removals if they
could not secure the appointment of their favorites. Make it impossible
for them to secure appointment, and the pressure would instantly
disappear and arbitrary removal cease.
So long, therefore, as we permit minor appointments to be made by mere
personal influence and favor, a fixed limited term and removal during
that term for cause only would not remedy the evil, because the
incumbents would still be seeking influence to secure re-appointment,
and the aspirants doing the same to replace them. Removal under plea
of good cause would be as wanton and arbitrary as it is now, unless the
power to remove were intrusted to some other discretion than that of the
superior officer, and in that case the struggle for reappointment and
the knowledge that removal for the term was practically impossible would
totally demoralize the service. To make sure, then, that removals shall
be made for legitimate cause only, we must provide that appointment
shall be made only for legitimate cause.
All roads lead to Rome. Personal influence in appointments can be
annulled only by free and open competition. By that bridge we can return
to the practice of Washington and to the intention of the Constitution.
That is the shoe of swiftness and the magic sword by which the President
can pierce and outrun the protean enemy of sophistry and tradition which
prevents him from asserting his power. If you say that success in
a competitive literary examination does not prove fitness to adjust
customs duties, or to distribute letters, or to appraise linen, or to
measure molasses, I answer that the reform does not propose that fitness
shall be proved by a competitive literary examination. It proposes to
annul personal influence and political favoritism by making appointment
depend upon proved capacity. To determine this it proposes first to test
the comparative general intelligence of all applicants and their special
knowledge of the particular official duties required, and then to prove
the practical faculty of the most intelligent applicants by actual trial
in the performance of the duties before they are appointed. If it be
still said that success in such a competition may not prove fitness, it
is enough to reply that success in obtaining the favor of some kind of
boss, which is the present system, presumptively proves unfitness.
Nor is it any objection to the reformed system that many efficient
officers in the service could not have entered it had it been necessary
to pass an examination; it is no objection, because their efficiency is
a mere chance. They were not appointed because of efficiency, but either
because they were diligent politicians or because they were recommended
by diligent politicians. The chance of getting efficient men in any
business is certainly not diminished by inquiry and investigation. I
have heard an officer in the army say that he could select men from
the ranks for special duty much more satisfactorily than they could be
selected by an examination. Undoubtedly he could, because he knows
his men, and he selects solely by his knowledge of their comparative
fitness. If this were true of the Civil Service, if every appointing
officer chose the fittest person from those that he knew, there would
be no need of reform. It is because he cannot do this that the reform is
necessary.
It is the same kind of objection which alleges that competition is a
droll plan by which to restore the conduct of the public business to
business principles and methods, since no private business selects
its agents by competition. But the managers of private business are
virtually free from personal influence in selecting their subordinates,
and they employ and promote and dismiss them solely for the interests
of the business. Their choice, however, is determined by an actual,
although not a formal, competition. Like the military officer, they
select those whom they know by experience to be the most competent. But
if great business-houses and corporations were exposed to persistent,
insolent, and overpowering interference and solicitation for place
such as obstructs great public departments and officers, they too would
resort to the form of competition, as they now have its substance, and
they would resort to it to secure the very freedom which they now enjoy
of selecting for fitness alone.
Mr. President, in the old Arabian story, from the little box upon the
sea-shore, carelessly opened by the fisherman, arose the towering and
haughty demon, ever more monstrous and more threatening, who would not
crouch again. So from the small patronage of the earlier day, from a
Civil Service dealing with a national revenue of only $2,000,000, and
regulated upon sound business principles, has sprung the un-American,
un-Democratic, un-Republican system which destroys political
independence, honor, and morality, and corrodes the national character
itself. In the solemn anxiety of this hour the warning words of the
austere Calhoun, uttered nearly half a century ago, echo in startled
recollection like words of doom: "If you do not put this thing down it
will put you down." Happily it is the historic faith of the race from
which we are chiefly sprung, that eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty. It is that faith which has made our mother England the great
parent of free States. The same faith has made America the political
hope of the world. Fortunately removed by our position from the
entanglements of European politics, and more united and peaceful at home
than at any time within the memory of living men, the moment is most
auspicious for remedying that abuse in our political system whose
nature, proportions, and perils the whole country begins clearly to
discern. The will and the power to apply the remedy will be a test of
the sagacity and the energy of the people. The reform of which I have
spoken is essentially the people's reform. With the instinct of robbers
who run with the crowd and lustily cry "Stop thief!" those who would
make the public service the monopoly of a few favorites denounce the
determination to open that service to the whole people as a plan to
establish an aristocracy. The huge ogre of patronage, gnawing at the
character, the honor, and the life of the country, grimly sneers that
the people cannot help themselves and that nothing can be done. But much
greater things have been done. Slavery was the Giant Despair of many
good men of the last generation, but slavery was overthrown. If
the Spoils System, a monster only less threatening than slavery, be
unconquerable, it is because the country has lost its convictions,
its courage, and its common-sense. "I expect," said the Yankee as he
surveyed a stout antagonist, "I expect that you 're pretty ugly, but I
cal'late I 'm a darned sight uglier." I know that patronage is strong,
but I believe that the American people are very much stronger.
CARL SCHURZ,
OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1829.)
THE NECESSITY AND PROGRESS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
An Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil Service
Reform League at Chicago, Ill., December 12, 1894.
What Civil Service reform demands, is simply that the business part of
the Government shall be carried on in a sound, business-like manner.
This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common-sense
there should be no two opinions about it. And the condition of things
to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd
and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among
sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among
ourselves. In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that
viciousness and absurdity home to our own minds unless we contemplate it
as reflected in the mirror of a simile.
Imagine, then, a bank, the stockholders of which, many in number, are
divided into two factions--let us call them the Jones party and the
Smith party--who quarrel about some question of business policy, as, for
instance, whether the bank is to issue currency or not. The Jones
party is in control, but the Smith men persuade over to their side a
sufficient number of Jones men to give them--the Smith men--a majority
at the next stockholders' meeting. Thus they succeed in getting the
upper hand. They oust the old board of directors, and elect a new board
consisting of Smith men. The new Smith board at once remove all the
officers, president, cashier, tellers, book-keepers, and clerks, down to
the messenger boys--the good and the bad alike--simply because they are
Jones men, and fill their places forth-with with new persons who are
selected, not on the ground that they have in any way proved their
fitness for the positions so filled, but simply because they are Smith
men; and those of the Smith men who have shown the greatest zeal and
skill in getting a majority of votes for the Smith party are held to
have the strongest claims for salaried places in the bank. The new men
struggle painfully with the duties novel to them until they acquire some
experience, but even then, it needs in many instances two men or more to
do the work of one.
In the course of events dissatisfaction spreads among the stockholders
with the Smith management, partly shared by ambitious Smith men who
thought themselves entitled to reward in the shape of places and
salaries, but were "left out in the cold." Now the time for a new
stockholders' meeting arrives. After a hot fight the Jones party carries
the day. Its ticket of directors being elected, off go the heads of
the Smith president, the Smith cashier, the Smith tellers, the Smith
bookkeepers, and clerks, to be replaced by true-blue Jones men, who have
done the work of the campaign and are expected to do more of it when
the next election comes. And so the career of the bank goes on with its
periodical changes of party in power at longer or shorter intervals, and
its corresponding clean sweeps of the bank service, with mismanagement
and occasional fraud and peculation as inevitable incidents.
You might watch the proceedings of such a banking concern with intense
curiosity and amusement. But I ask you, what prudent man among you would
deposit his money in it, or invest in its stock? And why would you not?
Because you would think that this is not sensible men's business, but
foolish boys' play; that such management would necessarily result in
reckless waste and dishonesty, and tend to land many of the bank's
officers in Canada, and not a few of its depositors or investors in the
poor-house. Such would be your judgment, and in pronouncing it you
would at the same time pronounce judgment upon the manner in which the
business part of our national Government, as well as of many if not most
of our State and municipal governments, has been conducted for several
generations. This is the spoils system. And I have by no means presented
an exaggerated or even a complete picture of it; nay, rather a mild
sketch, indicating only with faint touches the demoralizing influences
exercised by that system with such baneful effect upon the whole
political life of the nation.
Looking at the financial side of the matter alone--it is certainly bad
enough; it is indeed almost incomprehensible how the spoils system could
be permitted through scores of years to vitiate our business methods
in the conduct of the national revenue service, the postal service, the
Indian service, the public-land service, involving us in indescribable
administrative blunders, bringing about Indian wars, causing immense
losses in the revenue, breeding extravagant and plundering practices
in all Departments, costing our people in the course of time untold
hundreds of millions of money, and making our Government one of the
most wasteful in the world. All this, I say, is bad enough. It might be
called discreditable enough to move any self-respecting people to shame.
But the spoils system has inflicted upon the American people injuries
far greater than these.
The spoils system, that practice which turns public offices, high
and low, from public trusts into objects of prey and booty for the
victorious party, may without extravagance of language be called one of
the greatest criminals in our history, if not the greatest. In the whole
catalogue of our ills there is none more dangerous to the vitality of
our free institutions.
It tends to divert our whole political life from its true aims. It
teaches men to seek something else in politics than the public good.
It puts mercenary selfishness as the motive power for political action
in the place of public spirit, and organizes that selfishness into a
dominant political force.
It attracts to active party politics the worst elements of our
population, and with them crowds out the best. It transforms political
parties from associations of patriotic citizens, formed to serve a
public cause, into bands of mercenaries using a cause to serve them. It
perverts party contests from contentions of opinion into scrambles for
plunder. By stimulating the mercenary spirit it promotes the corrupt use
of money in party contests and in elections.
It takes the leadership of political organizations out of the hands of
men fit to be leaders of opinion and workers for high aims, and turns it
over to the organizers and leaders of bands of political marauders. It
creates the boss and the machine, putting the boss into the place of the
statesman, and the despotism of the machine in the place of an organized
public opinion.
It converts the public office-holder, who should be the servant of the
people, into the servant of a party or of an influential politician,
extorting from him time and work which should belong to the public, and
money which he receives from the public for public service. It corrupts
his sense of duty by making him understand that his obligation to his
party or his political patron is equal if not superior to his obligation
to the public interest, and that his continuance in office does not
depend on his fidelity to duty. It debauches his honesty by seducing
him to use the opportunities of his office to indemnify himself for
the burdens forced upon him as a party slave. It undermines in all
directions the discipline of the public service.
It falsifies our constitutional system. It leads to the usurpation, in
a large measure, of the executive power of appointment by members of the
legislative branch, substituting their irresponsible views of personal
or party interest for the judgment as to the public good and the sense
of responsibility of the Executive. It subjects those who exercise the
appointing power, from the President of the United States down, to the
intrusion of hordes of office-hunters and their patrons, who rob them of
the time and strength they should devote to the public interest. It has
already killed two of our Presidents, one, the first Harrison, by worry,
and the other, Garfield, by murder; and more recently it has killed a
mayor in Chicago and a judge in Tennessee.
It degrades our Senators and Representatives in Congress to the
contemptible position of office-brokers, and even of mere agents of
office-brokers, making the business of dickering about spoils as weighty
to them as their duties as legislators. It introduces the patronage
as an agency of corrupt influence between the Executive and the
Legislature. It serves to obscure the criminal character of bribery
by treating bribery with offices as a legitimate practice. It thus
reconciles the popular mind to practices essentially corrupt, and
thereby debauches the popular sense of right and wrong in politics.
It keeps in high political places, to the exclusion of better men,
persons whose only ability consists in holding a personal following
by adroit manipulation of the patronage. It has thus sadly lowered the
standard of statesmanship in public position, compared with the high
order of ability displayed in all other walks of life.
It does more than anything else to turn our large municipalities into
sinks of corruption, to render Tammany Halls possible, and to make of
the police force here and there a protector of crime and a terror to
those whose safety it is to guard. It exposes us, by the scandalous
spectacle of its periodical spoils carnivals, to the ridicule and
contempt of civilized mankind, promoting among our own people the growth
of serious doubts as to the practicability of democratic institutions on
a great scale; and in an endless variety of ways it introduces into
our political life more elements of demoralization, debasement, and
decadence than any other agency of evil I know of, aye, perhaps more
than all other agencies of evil combined.