Carl Schurz

“ It is hardly worth while to answer the pretence he gravely puts forth that if appointing officers, with all their responsibility, are accessible to political influence, civil service examiners, without such responsibility, must be still more accessible. Every intelligent person knows that appointing officers, unprotected by civil service rules, have been controlled by such influence, and that civil service examiners have not been so controlled. ”

“ Here is the other old assertion again, that department chiefs know best what kind of men they want for their work, and that under their sense of responsibility they would be careful to select just such men as the duties to be performed demand — and this in the face of the unquestioned experience of many years that appointing officers, when unprotected by a civil service law, are always exposed to a political pressure which constantly forces the appointment of men upon them of whom they know little or nothing, and transforms their own discretion into mere subserviency to influence. ”

“ That an honest competitive system is the only one sure to open public employment to all classes of the people on equal terms by rendering powerless the aristocracy of influence; (2) that the bill, by substantially turning over the civil service examinations to the appointing power, would expose the appointing officers again to the full force of the pressure of influence, and thereby, as all experience proved, restore the abuses of spoils politics; (3) that inasmuch as it impaired the competitive system, it violated the Constitution, which demands competitive examinations whenever practicable ”