Carl Schurz

“ In a large number of cities, North and South and East and West, the merit system has already been adopted to govern the municipal service — in Chicago by a popular majority of 50,000 — or popular movements led by the most respectable citizens are on foot to secure its adoption. In all parts of the country civil service reform is progressing with a rapidity beyond the most sanguine expectations of its friends. Only in the State of New York, where the merit system exists under the safeguard of a constitutional mandate, a systematic effort is being made to nullify it. ”

“ And these are the forces engaged in this assault upon the merit system. The trouble which exasperates such politicians as Mr. Gruber is easily understood. Without the prospect of the spoils of office they cannot hold their hands of heelers together. And therefore they shriek at the top of their voices that because of civil service reform patriotism will die out and popular government will vanish from the earth. What they slanderously attribute to the American people is really true of their own followers. “No pap, no patriotism” is their cry. But it is not the cry of good American citizenship. ”

“ The same just popular instinct saw the means to this end in the competitive merit system, which opens the way to public place not merely to the favored partisan worker, but to every citizen, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, who can show his fitness for the duties to be performed, and which, regardless of politics, religious creed, or social station, gives the best men the best chance. ”

“ The champions of this “progressive” movement had for months ransacked the records of the Civil Service Board of this city, which they were freely permitted to do, to the end of finding questions asked by examiners that might be ridiculed, and they had left no stone unturned to discover persons appointed after competitive examinations who had proved unfit for their places. ”