Carl Schurz

“ Are there no party contests stirring the popular mind to its very depth? And now, in the freest of all countries, where the people in the largest sense are called to govern themselves, where the people owe so much to their democratic institutions and are said to be so proud of them, here there should not be patriotism and public spirit enough, here it should require the sordid allurement of spoils and plunder to inspire the citizens with an active interest in their own affairs? ”

“ When speaking here of the American people I do, of course, not mean all the people. I do not mean the machine politicians of the two parties, who live on spoils. I do not mean Tammany Hall. I do not mean those poor creatures in Congress and in other high places who know they have not ability enough to sustain themselves as statesmen, and depend upon a following bought with patronage to prop them up. I do not mean the selfish speculators in politics, who find in the corruption underlying the patronage trade a congenial element. ”

“ When thinking of the means to abolish the spoils system, our eyes turn not unnaturally to the man whom the people recently put at the head of the National Government. He has the power to strike a decisive blow; he has the opportunity, and it would be an offense to doubt that he has the will. He knows, as we know, that the people put him where he is because he was trusted to be opposed to the vicious methods which so long have poisoned our political life. ”

“ There will still be political workers, but they will be workers for public measures and policies, no longer the mercenary crowd working for loot. There will be leaders, but statesmanlike leaders of thought and endeavor—no longer leaders of hireling bands. There will be party contests, but contests of opinion fired with the enthusiasm for great principles—no longer miserable cat-fights for post-offices and collectorships. ”

“ The spoils politician is fond of objecting that civil service examinations do not always point out the fittest man for the place. Perhaps not always. The best marksman does not hit the bull's-eye every time, but he misses it rarely. The civil service examinations may have a small record of failures. But what the system fairly conducted always does is to snatch public office from the undemocratic control of influence and favoritism. And there is the point which stings the spoils politician. It would trouble him little whether or not the fittest man is put in the proper field of action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One mode of the misappropriation of public funds is avoided when appointments to office, instead of being the rewards of partisan activity, are awarded to those whose efficiency promises a fair return of work for the compensation paid to them. To secure the fitness and competency of appointees to office, and to remove from political action the demoralizing madness for spoils, civil service reform has found a place in our public policy and laws. ”

“ What qualifications have you for serving the people? Have you more than other candidates for the place?” On the one side, under the spoils system, the aristocracy of influence—and a very vulgar aristocracy it is—robbing the man who has only merit unbacked by power, of his rightful chance. On the other hand, civil service reform, inviting all freely to compete, and then giving the best chance to the best man, be that man ever so lowly, and be his competitor ever so great a favorite of wealth or power. ”

“ No matter whether he was ever so good a public servant, the man who was in was to be kicked out to let him in who was out, no matter whether he would be not half so good a public servant. The office-hunting throng swept into the White House and into the Departments like a cloud of locusts. ”

“ If there be anything like a feudal aristocracy in politics, it is that born of the spoils system—the party bosses, the machine leaders, the dealers-out of patronage—such as King Croker, Duke Murphy, Marquis Sheehan, Earl Gilroy and the sturdy barons holding fiefs and wielding power as Tammany district leaders here—a somewhat rough nobility to be sure, but quite as enterprising as any that levied tax on unprotected merchants' wagons and upon the unwary traveller's purse in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Imagine such men to go to Washington in order to look into the machinery of what may without exaggeration in some respects be called the greatest, and certainly the freest Government on earth—the one which ought to be the model Government of the world. ”

“ Democratic government rests upon the principle of equal rights. It abhors privilege and favoritism. But it is privilege and favoritism upon which the spoils system rests—the privilege of those in authority or of influential politicians to dispose of the public offices as their patronage, distributing that patronage by way of personal or political favor. It is justly said that the offices belong to the people and must be open to the people. ”

“ Although the President, in making the so-called Presidential appointments by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, cannot under the Constitution be bound by rules restricting his power, yet he may impose rules upon himself for the government of his own conduct in the exercise of the appointing power, so as to strip the offices of the character of party spoil and to treat them as what they are really intended to be: places of trust and duty, to be administered for the benefit, not of a political party, but of the people. ”

“ But the city will have other organizations for government, and then a government of public spirit, a government in which the best men will be proud to take part; and it will at once appear how little the political ardor and activity of the Tammany kind was required to make New Yorkers happy. We hear it said that the possession and the use of the spoils of office are needed to render a political party strong and successful. It is refreshing to see what the American people have of late come to think of the virtue imparted to a political party by the possession of the plunder. ”

“ The shame of the fact that the spoils system, of which all this is but the natural outgrowth, has prevailed among us for more than half a century, we cannot hide from the searching eyes of mankind—just as in times gone by we could not hide the hideous blot of slavery. ”

“ He is known as a man of genuine convictions, and may be trusted to mean what he says and to act according to his meaning. On no subject of public concern, neither on the tariff, nor on the currency, nor on Constitutional principles, has he expressed himself with deeper earnestness, with more emphatic directness, than on the necessity of civil service reform. ”

“ Imagine a merchant discharging his salesmen and bookkeepers, a manufacturer discharging his foremen and artisans, a railroad corporation discharging its engineers and switchmen, a bank discharging its cashiers and tellers every four years on the ground that they have been in their places long enough and somebody else ought to have them now—would you trust a bank conducted upon such principles with your deposits, and would you like to travel on such a railroad? ”

“ The people are, therefore, evidently entitled to the best service they can get, and no interest, neither that of a political party nor that of any citizen, has a right to stand in the way. Those entrusted with the power of appointing officers are, consequently, in duty bound to regard office solely as a public trust, and to appoint only persons found fittest to give the people the best possible service. ”

“ As an element of party strength the possession of the offices has clearly proved a failure. The wise politician will seriously consider, in the light of recent history, whether it is not really an element of party weakness. How much stronger than a party gorged with spoil would that party be in the respect and confidence of the people that could truthfully say: “I was in control of the Government, and I have not selfishly abused my power. ”

“ Men have begun to respect and to love it for the enemies it has made. We have not far to seek for the reason. What is civil service reform? It is the application of common-sense and common honesty to the public service. And the American people are in the main a sensible and an honest people. ”

“ The patriotic American, mindful of the honor of his country, asks himself with anxious interest how the spectacle of the passage of our National Government from the control of one party to that of another will strike these keen observers, and how their experiences, communicated to the world, will affect the standing of this Republic in the opinion of civilized mankind. ”

“ Tell them this with decision and firmness, and soon the wild scramble will cease which harasses you and your aids beyond endurance, almost blocking the wheels of the Government and exposing us to the scoffs of civilized men. Let all concerned well understand that only the public interest will be served and no spoils are to be had while you are President, and you will find Congress more willing than it ever has been to regulate the service permanently by rational legislation. It may be said that by doing this you will offend many politicians. ”

“ Imagine them to find the National capital occupied by eager crowds clamoring for the public offices as the hireling soldiery of past centuries may have clamored for the booty of a town taken by assault. ”

“ It has put the political boss, the leader of organized selfishness, in the place of the statesman. It has tended to make the political parties mere machines in the service of sordid greed. Instead of imparting healthy life and spirit to our political contests, it has sought to degrade them to the level of scrambles for plunder. Take out that spoils element and there will still be parties, but they will not become mutual assurance companies of speculators and self-seekers. ”

“ Does it mean that they must be open only to those who have influence themselves, or who have the influence of powerful politicians behind them? No; according to true democratic principle it means that the offices must be open to all citizens according to their fitness to fill them; that they must be most open to those who are most fit to fill them; that free and equal opportunity must be furnished to all for showing who are the most fit, whether they be rich or poor, politicians or no politicians, backed by influence or not backed. ”

“ The national pride begins to be stung by a feeling of shame at the thought that abuses so glaring have been permitted to live so long in this mighty Republic of ours; and this feeling will be especially keen at this period of the World's Exposition—it might be called the world's meeting—upon our soil, when merchants, manufacturers, workingmen, artists, men of science, men of letters, statesmen, publicists, thinkers of all nations visit this Republic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was believed to be able and willing to secure to the people not merely a smaller measure, but the opposite of the tyrannous and demoralizing spoils politics, of which they are tired. He owes his elevation to the hope that his Administration would be different from most of those which preceded it, not merely in degree, but in kind. We, who are an organization of devoted volunteers in the struggle for this cause, may without presumption speak to him and say: “You are beset by politicians great and small who, for their own advantage, seek to drive you from your noblest purposes. ”

“ Here is a patriot who has a large family to support and needs a post-office to help him along. There is another who wants a consulship abroad because he himself or his wife is in bad health and a change of climate would do good, or his daughter has a fine talent for music which should be developed in Europe. There is still another who wants the prestige of official recognition in the shape of a collectorship or a marshalship to enable him to exercise still higher political authority over the minds of his fellow-citizens. ”