The corrosive power of the spoils system and the eternal struggle for party integrity

“ Because parties are responsible for a good many small, mean, and sometimes dishonorable acts, we often hear parties and partisanship denounced. People express the wish that there might be an end to “party politics” and to “partisanship,” and that “all good men might get together” for the good of the whole country. This may happen when there is Heaven on earth, but not before. Even the good and honest men continue to differ about which is the wisest way to do things, and so the people who think the same way about most matters get together in a party. ”

“ The brutal cynicism with which certain Republican Senators and Representatives kick aside the solemn pledges of their party contained in its national platforms for a quarter of a century — pledges upon which the party has constantly asked for the votes of the people — shocks the popular conscience. ”

“ So we hear from all sides expressions of disgust at the scandalous spectacle of the spoils-carnival with every change of party in power, and the reckless distribution of public offices among political workers undeserving of honor and confidence. One public man in high station after another declares that the position of spoils-jobbers to which they are degraded puts upon them intolerable burdens, and that it must cease. ”

“ To the party displaced it is an injury, he having become a proficient in that business, expecting to remain in it during good behavior, and finding it difficult, at an advanced age, and with fixed habits, to begin a new career in some new walk of life. It converts elections into scrambles for office, and degrades the government into an office for rewards and punishments; and divides the people of the Union into two adverse parties, each in its turn, and as it becomes dominant, to strip and proscribe the other. ”

“ The evil would increase with the multiplication of offices consequent upon our extension, and the mania for officeholding, growing from its indulgence, would pervade our population so generally that patriotic purpose, the support of principle, the desire for the public good and solicitude for the Nation's welfare would be nearly banished from our party contests and cause them to degenerate into ignoble, selfish and disgraceful struggles for the possession of office and public place. ”

“ There is the old and truthful story that the bestowal of every office as a favor makes one ingrate and ten enemies. Besides, the very aspect of the distribution of offices in the spoils-carnival way, with the gross mistakes inseparable from such a barbarous method, begins to be so disgusting to a great and constantly increasing number of good citizens, that it goes far to turn away their affection and confidence from the party responsible for it. ”

“ You answer by reminding him of our own experience that in the last four presidential elections that party which possessed the patronage was regularly beaten; that therefore the patronage has certainly not proved an element of strength sufficient to save a party from defeat; that it is rather an element of weakness in creating disappointments and animosities, and in making, by its inevitable abuse, the party possessing it odious to public spirited citizens. ”

“ All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes—the product of sixteen years’ ascendency of the Republican party—create a necessity for reform, confessed by the Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in convention and displaced from the cabinet. The party’s mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the 80,000 office-holders, its leaders and guides.
Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revolution. We demand a change of system, a change of administration, a change of parties, that we may have a change of measures and of men. ”

“ If we want good government, is it not time that we should take our share in the struggle to secure it?” And hence that fresh political activity, that freedom of criticism, that breaking of party lines, that movement of independence all over the field, which makes political ringmasters tremble and patriotic citizens rejoice in new hope. ”

“ The Liberal Republicans were a portion of the Republican party that was dissatisfied with the administration of General Grant, and the course of the party. In Missouri (1870) a liberal faction withdrew from the Republican party, and nominated an opposition ticket which, with Democratic aid, was successful. The Liberal movement grew into political importance in 1871, and assumed a national organization in 1872.
Elections of 1872.—The Liberal Republicans met at Cincinnati in national convention, May 1st, 1872, adopted a platform [see D. and Pl.] ”

“ A new party, the Republican, came into being, as it were, in a day. The pro-slavery Whigs went to the Democrats, the anti-slavery Whigs became Republicans. Those who were neither one nor the other lingered on as the mere shadow of a party until the civil war broke out. A large accession from the Democratic ranks made the Republicans so strong that in their first presidential campaign they were almost successful, and in their second they achieved a decisive victory. ”

“ If you honestly want reform, this is the first thing needful; you must break the subjugation of individual conscience in politics; you must make elbow room for independent criticism and a free contest of opinions; you must put down that partisanship which knows none but selfish ends and tends to make men mere parts of a machine; you must promote, with all the means in your power, the unsettling and disintegration of the old party organizations now existing, and no man of impartial judgment will deny that in this respect the success of the Cincinnati movement will prove a powerful dissolvent. ”

“ But you may safely take it that wherever a party machine exists, mainly held together by what has picturesquely been called “the cohesive power of public plunder”, it will, by a natural process, tend to evolve that bossdom I have described—here a little more rapidly, there a little more slowly, as local conditions may be more or less favorable to it.
Wherever it exists, even in comparatively small beginnings, it will tend to grow in extent and rapacity of power ”

“ Those forces consist of the small politicians who covet the offices for their personal advantage, the political leaders who seek to control the offices as party spoil in order to hold together and increase their following, and the unsteady statesmen in power who, while professing, often not without sincerity, to be “also” in favor of civil service reform, have indeed courage enough to assert their professed principles against their party enemies, but not firmness enough to maintain them against their party friends. ”

“ I know that heads of departments who cared more for party politics than for the good of the service used that discretion recklessly for political or personal ends without much regard to the public good. I know that heads of departments who cared more for the public good than for party politics must have had in them the stuff that martyrs are made of, in order to resist, in the exercise of their discretionary appointing-power, that political pressure which sought to extort from them appointments obnoxious to their sense of duty, and that such martyrs never have been plenty. ”

“ Surely, unless they have entirely forgotten the political record of the last twenty years, they cannot still indulge in the silly delusion that in our days a political party can strengthen itself by grabbing patronage, especially when this is done by a breach of plighted faith. Taking it all in all, it will be difficult to find in our political history party men that invited crushing defeat so systematically as the Republicans in Congress are inviting a deluge now. ”

“ But a large majority of them are in their inward souls disturbed and disgusted when they see, after a party victory, hordes of partisans pounce upon the offices of the Government like a band of greedy mercenaries plundering a captured city. They are ashamed when, after the incoming of a new Administration, they hear of a President wishing to abolish this scandal but not being permitted to do so by the ravenous spoilsmen of the party, and of an official guillotine at work and of so many heads falling every day. ”

“ They would find themselves forced to the conclusion that the spoils system, as it has grown up in this Republic in the last sixty years, is only a relapse into the corrupt and demoralizing patronage system of monarchical and aristocratic England when it was at its worst, and that civil service reform is the embodiment of the truly democratic principle there as well as here. ”

“ No mere party cry is potent enough to cover the short-comings of political leaders. The quarrels going on within the existing organizations have sharpened the spirit of minute inquiry and given an unusual stimulus to universal and thorough investigation. While the factions may be bent upon mere malicious fault-finding with one another without a higher aim, the real public opinion of the country has gradually become accustomed to the application of higher standards to the methods of administration, as well as to the men charged with power and responsibility. ”

“ Neither do the independent movements we observe in several States distinctly foreshadow new party formations on the field of national politics. They are protests against “machine” rule, as in Pennsylvania, or against a narrow-minded and vicious use of party power by factions, as in some of the Southern States, and may result in taking the controlling influence within the old parties from one set of persons to give it to another, or even in permanent defections and eventual transfers of considerable bodies of voters from one of the old parties to the other. ”

“ The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual ”

“ Our cause is based on the eternal principles of righteousness; and even though we who now lead may for the time fail, in the end the cause itself shall triumph. Six weeks ago, here in Chicago, I spoke to the honest representatives of a Convention which was not dominated by honest men; a Convention wherein sat, alas! a majority of men who, with sneering indifference to every principle of right, so acted as to bring to a shameful end a party which had been founded over half a century ago by men in whose souls burned the fire of lofty endeavor. ”

“ Adding to this the quarrels of factions distracting it, the growing laxity of that discipline which formerly was one of the principal elements of its fighting strength, and the increasing feeling of discouragement and distrust as to its future, which has been nourished by frequent and disastrous defeats after the most sanguine expectations of victory, and has inspired many of its members with a growing indifference concerning its fortunes, it must be admitted that the Democratic party is not in a condition of great strength, neither as an opposition party nor as an aspirant for power. ”

“ But while we are ready to accept any and every good result of party action, we affirm that the moral reform of our public concerns is infinitely superior in importance to the interests of any political party. ”

“ No longer can Civil Service Reform be cried down by the so-called practical politicians as the nebulous dream of unpractical visionaries, for it has been grasped by the popular understanding as a practical necessity—not to enervate our political life, but to lift it to a higher moral plane; not to destroy political parties, but to restore them to their legitimate functions; not to make party government impossible, but to guard it against debasement, and to inspire it with higher ambitions ”

“ Glad to promote that reform through party action, we shall insist upon it at all events, should party action fail. Experience teaches us that the habitual submission of good citizens to a choice of evils presented to them by party organizations is one of the most prolific causes of corruption in our politics. The acceptance by the people of the argument that one party may be bad and still be entitled to the support of good men, because the other party is still worse, will induce each to consider how bad it may safely be. ”

“ But as the movement grows steadily in favor with public opinion, they have discovered that there is a popular demand to satisfy. Many of them, who still hate it at heart as much as they ever did, now profess to be themselves in favor of some sort of reform, which they pretend to be able to accomplish with their own methods. ”

“ Gentlemen of the Reform Organization of the Democratic party, I turn to you with a feeling of relief and hope. It is a joy to meet once more with men who dare to look the truth squarely in the face, and to call their souls their own. Your clearness of mind amid so much mental confusion, your firmness amid so much wavering, your courage amid so much pusillanimity, entitle you to the respect of friend and foe. You have manfully declined to kneel before the idol of a party organization serving bad ends. ”

“ Tell them once for all that the President of the United States, as you understand his duty, has in the use of his power only one interest to serve, and that is the common welfare. You have told us that it is very doubtful whether our Government could survive the strain of a continuance of the spoils system. Tell the spoils-seekers that it is the sacred duty of the President of the United States to guard the Government against this perilous strain, that he has no right to continue it and that, therefore, the distribution of offices as party spoils must cease altogether. ”

“ With such successes and such moral forces behind us, we may indeed hope to see the day when our party warfare will be contests of opinion free from the demoralizing and repulsive interference of the plunder-chase; when a change of party in the national Administration will no longer present the barbarous spectacle of a spoils debauch, torturing the nostrils of our own people and disgracing the Republic in the eyes of civilized mankind ”