The tenure of office in this country will be the subject of animated
discussion for some years. Civil Service Reform aims to correct an
abuse, and will probably achieve that end; but it is not certain that
the right method of reform has been found. The ideal of good service is
presented by a bank in which men serve indefinitely, and yet must serve
efficiently. They are removed if they fail; they are not removed if they
succeed. The difficulty in applying this rule to any form of public
service lies in removals for cause. How to secure the removal of the
man who fails? In the bank it is a simple thing to discharge a clerk.
In public life it is not at all simple or easy. The clerk has no vested
right to his place in the bank; in a department at Washington, a clerk
has a vested right to his place. The bank removes because it chooses to
do so. The government must invent some pretext or _prove_ inefficiency.
Tenure during good behavior makes a _quasi_ property of the office.
The ministry presents a good example of the workings of office tenure.
Thousands of churches are without installed pastors, and one of the
reasons given is that churches find it easier to install a man than
to dismiss him. In the Methodist Church a hot discussion over the
rule which limits continuous service in one church to three years has
afforded good observers a fine opportunity to see the play of feeling
and motive around the tenure principle. The change proposed has met
with a crushing defeat, because Methodists are more anxious to keep
the power to get rid of a poor pastor than they are to get the power
to keep a good one. Why? Because they have much more experience of
inefficient men than of efficient men. In short, the church says to
itself: “Pastors usually fail; they rarely succeed; it is best to be
able to send them away quietly.” This is not complimentary to the
ministry, but it is the substance of the argument which has defeated a
plan which had the sympathy of the best men in Methodism. The fact that
in other denominations changes of pastors are about as frequent as among
Methodists has the same explanation. For some reason the inefficient
ministers are believed to be more numerous than the efficient. There is
a suspicion in the general mind that this is true all round the circle
of salaried life, and that we need swift and easy and decorous means
of removing our public and semi-public servants more than we need to
fortify the good men in their positions. In the large view, what ails
us is poor work; and people in general think that the poor work is
already tied fast to us. The human nature of the public has been too much
overlooked. The human nature of the employed has hardly ever received
appropriate attention. There are two kinds of persons to be considered
in estimating the effect of time limits in any service. To one kind of
man security of tenure is a means of increased efficiency. He is zealous
and enterprising in his vocation. He is acutely conscientious toward
his employers, the more so the less they are visible and near to him.
To be secure in his place is to this man freedom to do good work and
conduct his career to fruitful issues. Any other tenure means to him a
harassing uncertainty in all plans and wearying anxieties about bread and
butter questions. Such a man can not serve a cause of any kind well on
an uncertain or limited tenure of office. The only possible uncertainty
for him—the only one consistent with good work—is that which concerns
the quality of his work. That species of uncertainty is one which he
feels to be in his power. He will do his work so well that no uncertainty
shall exist. But at the other extreme is a man to whose success the
sense of security is fatal. He works best under the whip of uncertainty.
He becomes lazy when the fear of removal does not exist. Between the
two extremes—conscientious enthusiasm at one end and place-keeping
inefficiency at the other—are men of a variety of tendencies to one
or the other character. Colleges probably present the best view of
the effect of security of tenure. The general public does not possess
intimate knowledge of the results of the system in seats of learning; but
now and then an intestine broil uncovers the college life, and invariably
discloses an unsatisfactory condition. For a good professor fixed tenure
is most wholesome; for a poor one it is unwholesome in its effects on
his character and work. A man of wide experience in colleges tells us
that there is not a college in the country but is lugging inefficient
men; and he expresses the opinion that less than half of the college men
are the best men for their places. In short, even in the college, unfit
men get places and keep them, to the great detriment of the college. In
an average institution four thoroughly good men carry six other men. A
few give the college its character; the majority are a burden, and some
men in this majority gloat over their supposed right to be lugged by the
college. Any rule which should rid colleges of mere place-holders, of
men weak in character, negligent in work, and far behind the times in
scholarship would double the usefulness and the patronage of colleges in
ten years. But if certainty of tenure is bad in college, it must be worse
elsewhere.
What is generally desired in the matter of tenure in service of any sort
is to cut off the chances for the purchase and sale of places, and for
the capricious and interested removal of good men. The scandals growing
up in public life from this base caprice in the appointing power have
sickened the popular stomach. Take, for example, the forced resignation
of a stenographer, at the end of a session, in order that the speaker of
the House of Representatives might appoint his own nephew to the place
_for the vacation_, during which there were no duties. The filthiness of
the proceeding surpasses belief; and yet it seems not to have provoked
any proper indignation in Congress. But fixed tenure has more evils than
it cures, and some middle way should be found. We can not afford to
ignore the fact that average men need the spur. The highly conscientious
and enterprising servant is yet too rare in the world for it to be safe
to adjust the terms of service to his character and to leave the majority
free from the whip.