Carl Russell Fish

“ During the middle of the century, when the American rotated in other professions, it was natural that he should rotate in office, and rotation and the spoils system probably secured, in most parts of the country, a better corps of civil servants than the present system would have done. To-day our general mode of life is more stable, and it is therefore natural that the government service should become more so; the class that is willing to settle down permanently to the prospect of a small but steady income, and a respectable but not distinguished station, is increasing. ”

“ A well-known American statesman once said, — of course in private, apropos of a pension bill, that the fact was that the grand army of the republic saved the country, and now it wanted it. It has been shown, from time to time, that military service has been thought to entitle a man to civil office. ”

“ All these tendencies are observable, and civil service reform is to be studied in connection with them and with all other political reform movements. Eternal vigilance, and not merely the mechanical selection of public officers, is the price of liberty. ”

“ If the organizations are maintained, reform is impossible, unless a substitute is found for the spoils system. If the substitute be money, the change is a bad one; if it be argument and the devotion of earnest men, it is good; if it be the drawing of rich men into politics and an approximation of the English aristocratic system, there may be two opinions as to its value ”

“ When we turn to the political results of the competitive selection of candidates, it is necessary to keep in mind the causa eundi of the spoils system — the fact that it came into being to supply a means of supporting political organization, that its essence lies in making the offices the campaign fund of the different parties. ”

“ The inclusion of all those honorably discharged would be most unwise, at a time when three hundred thousand young veterans have just come into existence; but the agitation will undoubtedly continue while there are men in Congress whose sympathy for the soldier, and appreciation of the soldier vote, is stronger than their desire for civil service reform. ”

“ Much more convincing, therefore, than statistical expositions of benefits is the general testimony of the most trusted executive officers as to the change for the better; and the more efficient work that these men have been able to do, because relieved in large measure of importunities for office, must be counted among the most important of the gains.
There are other facts which statistics do not show. One is that, under the new conditions, an entirely different class of men is attracted into the service. Under the old lack of system, any position might lead anywhere, and that quickly ”

“ Many attempts, more or less avowed, have been made to cripple the merit system before destroying it; for instance, bills have been introduced to allow the appointing officers to choose any applicant who has passed the examination, “to improve the civil service by affording advancement to those in the classified service who have been denied advancement through circumstances beyond their control,” to suspend the law during the first year of every presidential term. ”

“ Since that time there has been a growing civic consciousness, an appreciation of the serious duties of citizenship, which has furnished the energy to start numerous reforms on the road to ultimate adoption. Most significant, however, are the two facts that the balance of power has for some time been held by the business class, and that business methods have, since the crisis of 1873, become more careful and systematic. To call competitive examinations businesslike in 1850 would have been absurd; yet that has been constantly and increasingly the most effective argument in favor of the system. ”

“ Government service, moreover, in this country, is not held to be a badge of honor, as it is in Germany and France, and, to a degree, in England; it will never form the basis of a bourgeois aristocracy, and hence will attract of the steady-going only those who have no better financial opportunities. ”

“ Until men of more ability are attracted by the examinations that give entrance to the civil service, the system of mechanical promotion cannot be extended up through the service to positions requiring executive power and independent judgment ”

“ A troublesome minor question in this connection is how far the servants of the state may be allowed to indulge in politics. As has been pointed out, and as every man in middle life knows, the activity of office-holders is much less than it once was; but what are the proper limits? Present public sentiment in America would not countenance any effort to gag the civil service; and we certainly do not wish the public employees to constitute a separate political body as they come very near doing in Australia. Some reformers have of late been taking very advanced ground ”

“ It must be acknowledged, however, that as yet the ordinary positions of the civil service — those offering no special inducements for research or travel — do not tempt as able young men as business opportunities of equal grade. ”

“ The ideal condition, doubtless, is that all citizens should participate alike in politics; but it is also true that, in order to discourage officials from taking that undue interest in politics to which they have been accustomed in times past, special repression will be long necessary. It should, however, be recognized that the influence which a collector of customs exerts over his subordinates and that by which a manufacturer controls his employees, are closely akin. ”

“ In list after list of the members of civil service reform associations, not a name can be found that does not suggest to one acquainted with the nomenclature of the various localities, education, wealth, or social position; the very list of such societies existing in 1892 shows that centres of learning and wealth, and not of population, are represented. ”

“ The mere fact that appointment to so many offices has been taken from the discretion of the executive means that so many the fewer friends can be rewarded. The successive reports of the Civil Service Commission show that, although every campaign brings to light new methods of circumventing the law, assessments are really becoming much less common ”

“ Just when such measures were becoming less dangerous because of the age of the veterans of the great conflict, the Spanish War brought new candidates for recognition, and renewed interest in war and warriors, and since then new floods of measures have been presented. President McKinley, without waiting for legislation, properly extended to our new veterans the privileges of the old; but preference is still restricted to the wounded and sick, and in the classified service of course applies only to those who receive a pass mark. ”

“ The division has tended to lie between those favorable and those unfavorable to civil service reform.
Congress has been flooded with bills to make the road to office easy for the soldier: in one session four such bills were presented to the Senate and thirteen to the House. Reports have been called for, chiefly by the Senate, to show how far the preference already provided for is observed. Bills have passed the Senate to extend the preference to all soldiers honorably discharged; bills have been introduced to extend it to Confederates. ”

“ It is a very valuble thing to have at the capital a large number of representatives of the different sections; it creates a national atmosphere, and probably exerts an unconscious influence of a most beneficial character on Congress. ”

“ On the other hand, American individualism is being modified; and if many private corporations follow the example of the Pennsylvania Railroad, of Harvard University, and of other employers, the idea of pensions for the servants of the government will become less strange, and therefore less unpopular. ”

“ As a result of the long Republican dominance, the Southern states had a comparatively small number of citizens in the departments at Washington, and an undue proportion of these consisted of negroes, because of the political proclivities of the latter. At present there are no glaring inequalities; and white Democrats from the South are more numerous, while the negroes from the North have increased. ”

“ Then the great numbers of men with four years of Washington experience and fresh from contact with their fellow-citizens from far away, who scattered broadcast over the land, must have carried with them much information that was useful to their friends, and that probably strengthened the bonds of union, which in those days so much needed strengthening. ”

“ If it fell into those of its enemies, it could probably be much relaxed without any great surface changes; in fact, the conditions in some of our states and cities show that the working of the law depends almost entirely upon the animus of the controlling political forces. ”

“ Of course many of the college men took more difficult technical examinations, yet the figures seem to indicate that many of the college-bred men who applied were of inferior capacity. Certainly an infusion of college men would benefit the service. ”

“ President McKinley, in his order of April 26, 1899, extended this provision to all officers in the classified service, with the restriction that those separated from the government for more than twelve months should take a pass-examination. The Civil Service Commission, in its seventeenth report, earnestly recommends that the former rule be reëstablished. [15]
Transfers form another vexing problem. Constant attempts are made to obtain permission for men to be transferred from the unclassified service to positions included under the rules. ”

“ It seems, also, that the examinations are so managed, doubtless partly in deference to public sentiment, that men of higher education are not encouraged to enter. In 1891, 629⁄10 per cent of those who took the examinations on the basis of a common-school education passed, 773⁄10 per cent f those who had been through high school, and only 671⁄10 per cent of the college men. ”