ROTATION IN OFFICE; A MISCHIEVOUS BY-PRODUCT OF THE MANHOOD
SUFFRAGE DOCTRINE AND ANOTHER FACTOR IN POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT; AND
HEREIN OF CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE REFORM.
One of the incidents of manhood suffrage is the practice of rotation in
office, which may be called a by-product of manhood suffrage and
represents a doctrine which is only applicable to machine politics. It
is sometimes supposed to mean that a public office is a desirable job at
which every man should have his turn; but this arrangement is
impossible, since there are not nearly offices enough for that purpose
even with replacements once a year, which is the limit of frequency thus
far proposed for office shifts; and although the politicians are
assiduous in making new laws and creating new officials to enforce these
laws; who are to be found registering, recording, inspecting and
reporting in every possible direction; though they discourage diligence
in office and encourage short hours and idleness in office holders, so
as to still leave a show of employment for others; yet with all they can
do, there will still be one hundred candidates for each place, and
ninety-nine of them disappointed. In practice therefore the bestowal of
good offices under the rotation system is necessarily limited; its
benefits are usually confined to the machine politicians and to a
certain number of favored candidates for machine favor; and the vision
of a future turn at the public provender is for most party followers
altogether illusory.
The doctrine of rotation in office has acquired a certain favor in
political circles, because it serves as an excuse for replacing
competent and experienced officials by new and incompetent ones, for
enforcing the “spoils” system, and aids in keeping in hand the
controllable vote.
It is born of the same civic immorality as the manhood suffrage
doctrine, and is an incident or offshoot of the vicious theory that the
vote is a natural right or privilege of the citizen. The manhood
suffrage claim is that the vote is for the benefit of the voter; the
rotation doctrine is that the office exists for the advantage of the
office holder. The two claims are related. On the one hand if the vote
be regarded as a function to be exercised only by the capable, then it
is easy and natural to insist upon proper qualifications for public
office holders and for permanency in office for the qualified; on the
other hand, if the citizen, as such, has an absolute right to vote, why
not to hold office? The analogy between a voter and an office holder is
not perfect, but it has often been found in practice sufficient to
satisfy the popular mind, unaccustomed to disinterested reflections. You
may say that the fact that a man is allowed to vote is no reason why he
should be permitted to hold office, and business men or men of property
will agree with you, for they are not easily tempted to seek public
employment. Not so, however, your voter who has neither property nor
settled income, nor business capacity sufficient to acquire either. His
education often early tends towards office seeking; he is strongly
advised by the newspapers and by twaddlers generally, to take part in
the primaries, to become active in politics; and if he does so, he soon
learns just how the thing is done. Why may not he then have a turn at
the trough as well as another? The politicians encourage this attitude.
They are of course strongly in favor of rotation in office as a system
which is in every way capable of use to the advantage of machine
politics. It accomplishes two things for them; it creates office
vacancies, and it dispenses with merit in filling them, leaving them
absolutely at the disposition of the machine to reward party services.
The politicians therefore are able and willing to persuade the
uneducated voters of the virtue of office rotation. Nor could they well
openly condemn it. You cannot admit the shiftless and ignorant into the
electorate, and then systematically spurn the ideas and claims which are
natural and appropriate to them as a class. One of these ideas is, that
one who has held any office a couple of years has had a fair share, and
ought to be satisfied to give way to someone else; and that if he
insists on coming up for re-election no matter how competent he may be,
he should be “knifed” as they say. And so we have in this country to a
mischievous extent the doctrine and system of rotation in office as one
of the troublesome and vicious incidents and results of manhood
suffrage.
It is interesting to note the dealings of the political managers with
this rotation doctrine, which as already stated is impossible of
practical enforcement except in a very limited way. They have no idea of
permitting this or any other theory to operate to their personal
disadvantage. The leaders must in any case be constantly fed at the
public crib; they must in any event be well provided for or the whole
system would collapse. In order therefore to keep up the illusion of
rotation for all, and a show of fairness, the managers are constantly
shifted about from one office to another. In this way there is in fact a
continuing series of changes among the office holders; and as a rule no
sooner does an incumbent become familiar with his duties than he is
displaced; but if he be a faithful party man he is at once put on the
list for something else. In fact, all of the class of regular
politicians are practically in office for life; the only effect of our
frequent elections being that they are constantly shifted from one
office to another. If any one will take the trouble to compare the list
of office-holders from year to year, he will see that most of the names
appear in successive administrations; but that they are moved from place
to place with the change in the political fortunes of the different
parties. When a candidate is defeated at an election, he is usually, if
a good politician, soon afterwards appointed to another office; if
necessary, a new office is created for him. If defeated at a city
election, he may be appointed to a federal office; if his party loses
the federal election, he soon turns up in a state or city office, and so
on; and so we have in the career of a politician a sort of ambulatory
office incumbency. He may be in turn tax collector, district attorney,
secretary or commissioner of this or that, judge or justice, state
senator, county clerk, foreign consul and so on. If high up in the
party, he will appear in the president’s cabinet, or as a foreign
minister or as member of some high salaried commission. Being a
politician he is supposed to be eligible for anything and everything,
and when at last he dies endowed with honors and with usually a fair
amount of cash after a life which has certainly been spent in the
service of his country, his newspaper obituary will point out to an
edified world how men of humble origin prosper in this free land.
This system has the effect of strengthening party discipline; under it
every office holder is much more obligated to the party boss than to the
public. True, he apparently owes his election to the people; but usually
only apparently; since most of the votes he receives are strictly party
votes, representing merely the will and the direction of the boss and
the machine. But to the latter the candidate’s obligation is clear,
direct and personal; to them he owes his nomination, or at least the
suggestion of his name to the primaries which makes his election
possible; and if defeated at the polls, his future is still in their
friendly hands. The party leaders and managers being thus cared for, and
their faithful service forever secured by the distribution among them of
all the best public employments, guaranteed by the rotation system
developed into a “steady job insurance” scheme, there remain the
inferior county, city, town and village offices for apportionment among
the smaller fry, and to these minor places a real rotation system is
applied to a greater or less extent. It is often understood that a
sheriff, alderman, tax collector, police magistrate, town solicitor or
attorney, county clerk, town or village official, etc., must be
satisfied with one or two terms and then give place to some other more
hungry politician. This is the rotation system in practice.
The demoralizing results of such a custom are easy to be seen among us
and still more easily imagined. Many public office holders in view of
the probable brevity of their tenure, try to hold on at the same time to
both private business and public office, with the natural result that
both are neglected. Elections are expensive. An official owing last
election’s bills finds the next one approaching with marvellous
rapidity. From rigid enforcement of laws enemies might result, from whom
next year’s candidate need expect neither money nor support, but rather
opposition; and after all, one year in office is a paltry reward for a
faithful party man after many years of fruitless canvassing. And so
comes lax administration, blinking of the eyes and scandal more or less
smothered. And in this and other ways the character of the office holder
is impaired. The lure of this kind of politics is as demoralizing as
that of gambling. Thousands of individuals who uncorrupted by political
life might have remained honest and industrious citizens, are spoiled
for real steady work by their experience of easy living at the public
cost, and become half knavish and altogether poor business men, and
sometimes even debauched and intemperate. And if the office holder does
his very best it usually happens that just when he has learned his
duties and begins to perform them well, his term approaches its finish
and a greedy greenhorn takes his place.
Everybody knows this and that it is all wrong. No one would think of
proposing such a vicious system for any private business; everyone is
aware that employés become more valuable with experience and training,
and that the success of a business establishment depends largely upon
keeping its old force in service year after year. Indeed, if justice
requires rotation in the well-salaried offices, the system should be
greatly extended, for after all, these political offices are not the
real prize employments; they are found in the high places in banks,
banking houses and great industrial and mercantile establishments. But
no one suggests than in a democracy there should be rotation of private
employment, that a bank cashier has had enough after two years of
$20,000 a year and that a mill superintendent should retire after three
years at $6,000 and be both replaced, one by a patriotic bank porter and
the other by a radical travelling salesman. The service of the people is
the only one that professional patriots insist upon breaking down by
frequent changes in the working force; by constant disorganization.
The reason for this hard treatment of the public service seems to be
that it sounds democratic and alluring to say that public office is a
prize open to all. It is remarkable how willing people are to be gulled
by catch phrases and sayings, like this of “rotation in office,”
“government by the people,” and the like. The first Napoleon caught a
lot of gudgeons by the saying that every private soldier carried a
marshal’s baton in his knapsack. American youths are gravely told that
each of them has a chance to become president of the United States;
another humbug, since about only one man out of every million can
possibly reach that office, no matter what the merits or deeds of the
others may be. Suppose some one opens Carnegie Hall, New York, free to
all comers to hear Caruso sing at a certain day and hour; no one could
say that he was excluded by the terms of the invitation; and yet the
manager would know perfectly well that only three thousand could
possibly be admitted, and that all who came after the first three
thousand would better have stayed at home. It would sound to the
thoughtless like a more generous and democratic act than the
distribution of three thousand free tickets, and yet it would in reality
be less so; it would indeed have somewhat the effect of a fraud on all
except the first three thousand. Now something like this invitation is
what is offered the American people when they are each invited, as they
constantly are invited, by the politicians in their universal suffrage
constitutions to come in and take a part as public officials in the
government of the nation. It is in every way impossible for all of us,
or for more than a very few of us to do so; and all they really can and
do offer us is just what we would have under a restricted suffrage,
namely leave to fight or wheedle our own way to public employment or to
political influence in the face of all who are determined to forestall
us, the number whereof is by these very constitutions made as numerous
as possible. And the so-called democratic invention of rotation in
office is just another worthless and fraudulent gift, of leave to each
of us, to struggle for a paltry office in competition with every
political adventurer in the community; when by the very terms of the
gift, the office itself is stripped of all honor and dignity, and has
attached to it the certainty that the winner is almost certain to be
deprived of the employment as soon as he shall have learned to fill it
with ability and credit to himself. Truly Barnum was right when he
undertook to build his fortune on the theory that most people love to be
humbugged.
Such are the ideals and practical workings of the democratic principle
of rotation in office, first put in practice by President Jackson and
his party managers, animated by the inspiring slogan “to the victors
belong the spoils.” It is difficult to imagine any system more
calculated than this to establish and encourage inefficiency in public
and private life. And though in consequence of the endless changes of
officials in the public service, the state and community are always
poorly served, the inferior party workers seldom get a turn at the good
places; they are just fooled by the higher politicians who, while
pretending frequently to surrender the offices, merely exchange them
among themselves. Thus the masses are made to suffer all the evils of
poor and dishonest public service, without even the small compensation
of a fair turn at the spoils.
Vigorous efforts have been made in the past thirty years to obviate some
of the mischiefs of the spoils system; especially by the application of
the system of civil service examinations to nominations to public
office. Under this system which is only applied to certain classified
offices, the appointment is supposed to be given to the candidate who
passes best in an examination prepared beforehand by a civil service
board and open to all applicants. There is neither space nor fitness
here for an extended discussion of the merits and weaknesses of this
Civil Service Reform plan as it is called. Its one pretended merit is
that it takes the appointments “out of politics” as they say, that is
out of the control of the political heads of the departments. No more
crushing condemnation of our political system could be imagined than is
contained in these federal and state statutes which deprive our high
officials of the power and privilege of the selection of many of their
own subordinates, the most important function of the head of a
department. That these chiefs should be furnished with advice and
assistance in making appointments where numerous, would be reasonable
enough; but that it should be found necessary as by this so-called
remedial system is actually done, to deprive them of all choice, direct
or indirect, in the selection of their subordinates indicates a shocking
condition of things. It means just this that the men whom manhood
suffrage puts in command are declared by statute to be unfit to be
trusted.
The defects of the Civil Service Reform plan are obvious, and have been
repeatedly pointed out. There are two principal ones; defects in
material and weakness in organization. All experience shows that mere
ability to answer questions is but slim proof of actual fitness for most
employments. The minds of the successful candidates are apt to be
storehouses of memory rather than factories of living ideas. The
tendency of the examination system must be to emasculate the public
service, to furnish it with half-hearted hirelings, destitute of
initiative; routinists, who secure in their places and deprived of
incentive to new achievement, gradually become mere wooden cogs in a
lifeless machine. The head of such a force cannot be expected to
accomplish much with men not chosen by him nor subject to his censure or
removal. Such a civil service will be weak in time of prosperity, and
may become intolerable in time of trouble and danger; an institution
similar to the bureaucracies of continental Europe or to Charles
Dickens’ “Circumlocution Office.” The late Andrew Carnegie, the great
iron master, ascribed his success entirely to his tuck and wisdom in
choosing his deputies. A political department is really a business
organization, and to be efficient, it should have a competent head
supported by a force of vigorous men of his own selection; chosen not by
book examinations, but for practical capacity, all constantly guided and
controlled by him, and inspired with the feeling of mutual
responsibility for results. The vice of the Civil Service Reform system
is that it entirely lacks the vigor and efficiency thus to be obtained.
No better proof of the hopeless desperation of the American political
reformers can be offered than their willingness even to consider the
establishment of this bureaucratic system among us. Bryce approves it
with the approval of despair:
“Rather, they would say, interdict office holders from
participation in politics; appoint them by competition, however
absurd competition may sometimes appear, choose them by lot, like
the Athenians and Florentines; only do not let offices be tenable
at the pleasure of party chiefs and lie in the uncontrolled
patronage of persons who can use them to strengthen their own
political position.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 609.)
The present writer has been unable to think of anything worse to say of
our present system of political appointments than this statement that it
is worse than appointments by lot. Let it go at that.
This is not the only country where men are dazzled by a vision of
rotation in office. The golden dream of public place as an idle refuge,
to be occupied in turn by lucky politicians, with opportunity for
respectable theft, is much indulged in in Cuba and the Central and South
American republics, and assists in the promotion of revolutions in those
countries. They feel there, that a bright and active man in a good
office, ought to be able in from three to five years to steal his share,
and should then be willing to retire in favor of someone else. For
similar reasons, a political party should go out every few years and
give the others a chance. This doctrine is accepted even by independent
onlookers of those countries, who often sympathize with the hungry outs
in their natural desire to get their turn at the public chest. And this
is why, when President Menocal’s first Cuban term of four years expired,
the opposition felt so outraged that he and his party should not be
willing to rotate out of office, that a revolution would probably have
supervened had it not been for the Platt Amendment. The faults of
foreigners are very conspicuous in our eyes, and therefore the reader
will surely agree that these foreign gangs of political adventurers,
whose only thought of their country is to drain her blood, are a scurvy
and contemptible lot, whose greed and lack of patriotism are abominable.
As for our own professional office seekers, now planning for their next
turn it is safest to say nothing; they may be our masters in a few days
or months, and prudence is a profitable virtue.