Carl Schurz

“ Are they so reckless as to permit, with eyes open, the squandering of their money at the rate of millions a year merely that their Congressmen may have more post office plunder at their disposal? Is it not time that good citizens should unite to tell the politicians in language vigorous enough to be heeded that this outrageous trifling with the people's service and the people's money must stop? ”

“ Can there be the slightest doubt that they would eagerly embrace every opportunity to disembowel the merit system, to make sport of the examinations, to give the freest possible play to spoils politics, behind the empty forms of the competitive rule, and to make the constitutional mandate a laughing stock for the “boys”? If anybody doubts, let him consider what has already happened. Last year the majority of the Fire Commission of New York city was composed of men of the spoils persuasion. ”

“ I do not speak here of the professional spoils monger who makes the providing of places for his henchmen or the building up of a party machine his principal business in public life. But I speak of men ordinarily conscientious in their conduct who will, perhaps moved only by the generous desire to help or please, or sometimes only to get rid of importunity themselves, not merely perfunctorily recommend and even earnestly and persistently urge the appointment of—pardon the vulgarism—the veriest “deadbeats” to positions requiring not only superior ability but a nice sense of honor. ”

“ There is here and there in the popular mind—even among those who on the whole favor the merit system—a lack of appreciation of just this point. We still hear reasoning like, this: “You wish the public service to be conducted on business principles. Now, would not any practical business man be better satisfied with some less restrictive method of ascertaining the qualifications of those he has to employ? Will he not be the best judge of those qualifications? Will he limit the freedom of his choice by any competitive system?” ”

“ Neither should the friends of good government in those States in which civil service laws are in preparation permit themselves for a moment to overlook or to underestimate the universal experience that, unless bottomed on the competitive principle, no civil service reform will be lastingly effective, and that unless made independent of the control of the appointing officers, no system of competitive examinations can maintain its integrity. Our duty to our cause demands that we should be careful not to let anything pass as true civil service reform that does not answer its essential requisites. ”

“ And in your name I express the hope that legislation enabling the Postmaster-General to carry out the admirable consolidation plan to the greatest possible extent, and to bring the smaller post offices which cannot be so consolidated, under effective civil service rules, will be pushed with the utmost energy, and will not cease to be pushed until the post office is what it was intended to be and always should have been: merely an efficient servant of public convenience, and no longer the booty of party warfare and a source of political demoralization. ”

“ The rapid progress of our cause during the last few years has not only gladdened its friends, but also exasperated its enemies. Until a recent period the spoils politicians have looked upon the civil service reform movement as a mere whimsey of theorists which would have its day and then pass by. They have at last become aware that it is a substantial force seriously threatening to annihilate their trade, unless effectively checked. They will be incessantly busy, if they cannot hope to overthrow it by open assault, to destroy it by a warfare of underground sapping and mining. ”

“ But it should be practical civil service reform. Examinations? Certainly. But they should be sensible, practical examinations. The trouble is, these professional civil service reformers do not know how to manage this business. They are mere theorists, one-sided, unpractical, unreasonable fanatics. In one word, whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats, they are Mugwumps. They ought to be reformed themselves. And we can do it. We are the men to give the country the reform it wants. ”

“ With the natural instinct of the spirit of mischief they hit upon the poison which, if injected into the body of the public service at large, would mot unfailingly kill every reform that has been accomplished in it. ”

“ There are probably in the city of New York, many otherwise well informed citizens, taking a lively interest in public affairs, who do not to-day even know the name of the collector of the port—not as if that gentleman were not an excellent officer, but because he is an excellent officer, devoted solely to his official duties, and not meddling with public affairs beyond those duties. ”

“ I am sure I am not going too far in saying that whenever you find a man who presents himself as a friend of civil service reform, but who stops short of the competitive principle as a general rule admitting but few exceptions, you have before you one who is either ignorant of the fundamental principle, or a pretender with evil designs. ”

“ The public officer is exposed to a peculiar pressure of political influences and importunities of which the private business man knows nothing. Of this pressure only those have a just conception who have actually experienced it.
It is a remarkable fact that many men in politics who are otherwise always mindful of the public interest, seem to lose all sense of responsibility whenever the patronage comes into question. ”

“ What they are struggling for is their own freedom to impose their choice upon him. Against these incessant efforts to enslave him to influences foreign to the public interest the appointing officer needs protection; and that protection he can find only in a law, or in a rule having the force of law, which restricts the choice to a limited number of candidates found most fit for the performance of official duty by impartial test. ”

“ When we are now told that our competitive examinations may indeed exhibit the scholastic acquirements of a candidate for place, but not his practical business capacity, his industry, or his aptitude as a worker, the overwhelming answer is found in the established fact, that wherever the competitive system has been properly carried out, it has immeasurably improved the service in its practical efficiency. ”

“ There are, of course, some public men who will never propose anybody for office of whose worthiness they are not personally convinced. But, alas, they are in the minority. On the whole, I feel myself warranted in saying that recommendations for office generally are among the most untrustworthy, aye, the most treacherous of human utterances, even if signed or spoken by men otherwise ever so respectable. ”

“ And whenever political parties or politicians speak of reforming the civil service and offer to that end a general measure of legislation not containing the competitive rule, you may set them down as either deceiving themselves or as seeking to deceive the people. ”

“ But even if the system of pass examinations could be maintained in successful working when applied only to a small number of conspicuous positions, it would under our conditions inevitably and speedily become worthless, a mere cloak for arbitrary favoritism and spoils politics, when applied to the thousands upon thousands of places in the national service which are less in the public eye, and even with the smaller number under our state and municipal governments. ”

“ Nor should we fail gratefully to remember the valuable services rendered by the National Civil Service Commission, which has proved itself conspicuously faithful, judicious, and efficient, and the loyal enforcement of the law in the several Government departments, especially that of the Post Office, which has resolutely sought to rescue the country Postmaster from the reach of spoils politics, and that of Agriculture, which has carried the domain of the competitive rule to the very top of its organization. ”

“ There are many among us who remember the time when the heads of our larger custom houses, post offices, navy yards, internal revenue offices, and so on, were looked upon as great party potentates responsible not merely for the business conduct of their respective offices, but for the political conduct of the districts over which they held sway—nay, whose political duties were not seldom regarded as paramount to their strictly official functions. ”

“ What does the spoils politician care whether the competitive system controls the appointments if he can get control of the competitive examinations? The party machine hopes to coerce Governors and Mayors into putting machine men at the head of the different departments of the service—places not subject to competitive examination. ”

“ His freedom to make his selections for appointment according to his sense of duty and his knowledge of the requirements of the service, of which we hear so much, is therefore a myth. In a large majority of cases, if apparently left free, he himself does not make those selections at all, but they are made for him and forced upon him by political influences with the impelling motives of which the public interest has ordinarily nothing to do. ”

“ In making those offices what they now are—business establishments in the conduct of which business principles are the ruling motive power—it has not only given the people a more honest and more efficient service, but it has also made a vigorous beginning of that moral reformation of our political life, which is its ultimate and its most important object. ”

“ Thus North and South and East and West, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the Northern frontier, the seed of the reform sentiment which so long seemed to have been sown in vain, is vigorously pushing and promising a harvest which not a few years ago was beyond the most sanguine flights of expectation. ”

“ But what will happen if men who persist in regarding public place as the mere spoil of party warfare, and their official power as a legitimate means for serving the “machine,” are put at the head of public departments and entrusted with the management of civil service examinations? ”

“ From this incessant, imperious, and deceptive pressure which forces itself mercilessly upon the appointing officer, the private business man is wholly exempt. In selecting his employees he is permitted to act upon his best judgment, while the appointing officer in the public service is not. ”

“ Every administration since the enactment of the civil service law, has signalized itself by some conspicuous advance of the merit system. If the incoming administration wishes to follow this rule its ambition cannot permit itself to be satisfied with merely adding to the competitive schedule a few more hundreds, or thousands of clerks. It will have to aim much higher. ”

“ Meanwhile, the majority of the Fire Commission has fallen into the hands of men who are not given to spoils politics, but are true to the public interest. These men are perfectly satisfied with the control of the examinations by the City Civil Service Board, and protest emphatically against the transfer of that control to the department on the very ground, that, in the long run, it would mean a return to the spoils system. The same opinion is expressed by other heads of departments for the same reason. ”

“ Truly, the slanderers who asserted that it requires the promise of reward in the shape of official spoil to inspire Americans with an earnest interest in the affairs of their country and to stimulate them to patriotic exertion have never more impressively been put to shame, and their disgraceful pretence ought not to be heard of again. ”

“ There seems to be something in the pursuit of office, either for oneself or for others, that benumbs all moral feeling as to means and ends, and tempts men to do things which they would in private life be ashamed of, and to make common cause with persons whom they would not socially recognize as fit to associate with. ”

“ The dangers threatening civil service reform come no longer from open assault upon the merit system, but from insidious attempts to destroy its substance, while preserving its forms. You may hear many a politician who all his life has trained with the old spoils guard, now deliver himself in this wise: “Civil service reform? ”