Carl Schurz

“ If we take as valid such reasons for curtailing the classified service, how long shall we be able to resist the spoils politicians showing us that there are other and far more numerous classes of places, the appointment to which is by statute vested in certain officers, and which, therefore, must be excluded from the merit system? ”

“ In President Grant's time civil service reform still appeared in this country as a new and strange scheme, running in the teeth of the political notions and habits of half a century, and clouded over by the uncertainties of a doubtful experiment. Now it is a stranger no longer. The people have made its acquaintance by actual observation. They know that it is not an idle fancy, but an eminently sober and practical conception ”

“ They know that it pursues this aim by methods which every intelligent business man standing at the head of a large establishment and exposed to constant and promiscuous pressure for employment would adopt for himself as eminently businesslike. In one word, they know that civil service reform as embodied in the merit system is simply the application to the public service of the plainest principles of common-sense and common honesty. ”

“ But much more drastic measures on the part of the Administration, to demonstrate its earnestness as to the maintenance of the merit system, will be required to cure that deterioration of the atmosphere in the public service which has been brought about by the multiplication of places filled by political influence as well as by the impunity with which in so many conspicuous cases the rules have been circumvented and the spirit of the law has been openly defied—an impunity which but too easily is taken for approval. ”

“ Those forces consist of the small politicians who covet the offices for their personal advantage, the political leaders who seek to control the offices as party spoil in order to hold together and increase their following, and the unsteady statesmen in power who, while professing, often not without sincerity, to be “also” in favor of civil service reform, have indeed courage enough to assert their professed principles against their party enemies, but not firmness enough to maintain them against their party friends. ”

“ Ever since the introduction of the spoils element in the Federal service, Members of Congress, Senators as well as Representatives, have sought to usurp the Constitutional function of the Executive in the making of appointments to office, and this has been one of the principal sources of demoralization in our political life. Every Administration, without distinction of party, has yielded more or less to that arrogation of Members of Congress, thus fostering the dangerous abuse. ”

“ And it is the most baneful feature of the President's order of May 29th that it so seriously increases that difficulty by strengthening the belief of the spoils hunters and patronage-mongers that neither the pledge of a great party to “enforce the civil service law honestly and thoroughly, and to extend it wherever practicable,” nor a President's solemn promise that there shall be “no backward step,” will hold out against the pressure of political influence if that pressure be only persevering and defiant. ”

“ But however powerful, it is far from being invincible. We cannot forget that against the same old combination the civil service reform movement has won all its successes, one after another, during periods of time when it was far less intelligently and vigorously supported by the public opinion of the country than it is to-day. ”

“ Even in the City of New York, where the sinister genius of Tammany Hall devotes itself with the accustomed zest and skill to the task of circumventing the civil service law, and where the local Civil Service Reform Association coöperating with the State authorities has to fight over every foot of ground, many valuable successes have been scored—at least in crossing iniquitous schemes and in making the ways of the transgressor duly hard. ”

“ Those who make this charge do not consider that it is the first duty of this League to hold up the true standard of civil service reform, and to be dissatisfied and to find fault with everything that does not come up to that standard. ”

“ But this is not even the worst aspect of the exemption of the shipping commissioners from the merit system. This is one of the cases in which the reasons given for an act are more injurious than the act itself. It may be that the President, exposed to a severe pressure from the spoils hunters in his own party, thought that he could appease their greed by giving them something and that then the pressure would stop. This will turn out to be a miscalculation. The giving of something to the spoils hunters has never satisfied but always sharpened their appetite. ”

“ They may even point out to us a statute providing that “each head of a Department is authorized to employ in his Department such number of clerks of the several classes recognized by law, and such other employees, and at such rates of compensation respectively as may be appropriated for by Congress from year to year,” and they may thereupon argue that, the law thus vesting the appointment of clerks and other employees in the heads of Departments, no interference by civil service rules with the discretionary power of the heads of Departments in making such appointments can be legal. ”

“ Neither can he close his eyes to the fact that, encouraged by the general backsliding tendency under his Administration that culminated in the order of May 29th, some of the most conspicuous abuses of the spoils system which under his immediate predecessors had become much restricted, are now developing new vitality. It is too notorious to be denied that persons in the Federal service have become much more forward again in what is called “pernicious partisan activity” than they were for many years. ”

“ But considering that he has really been selected for other reasons, this must be considered a happy accident, which surely should not be regarded as justifying the withdrawal of such offices from the merit system. Such a good officer has hardly got warm in his place when a change of Administration occurs and another high authority on judicial temperament demands and gets that place for his man—one that is only a good party worker but has no judicial temperament at all. ”

“ This is not surprising, for, as everybody acquainted with placeholders knows, the member of the classified service feels himself no longer secure in his tenure if he merely does his duty faithfully and efficiently, but he is troubled again by a sense of danger unless he win the favor of the party potentates by rendering such political service as may be exacted of him. ”

“ Still another example—the deputy internal revenue collectors, of whom there are a good many, and who are officers of great importance, as they have to collect more than half of the National revenue. They were put under the civil service rules by President Cleveland. The spokesman of the present Administration has defended their exemption on various grounds—in the first place, because the law vests the appointment of these deputies in the collectors, and they were, therefore, “according to the highest legal opinion the Treasury Department could get, illegally classified.” ”

“ The fact remains that, when persons are put into office for reasons other than their fitness for the duties to be performed, the aggregate result will inevitably be a demoralized, wasteful and inefficient service. ”

“ There is a very large number of positions now under the civil service rules, the duties of which are more or less quasi-judicial, such as the examiners in the Patent Office, and many division chiefs and high grade clerks in various departments who have to prepare the decision of cases. ”

“ Everybody knows that there is hardly an employment under the Government for the perfect discharge of the duties of which this or that quality of character or mental habit is not desirable, that cannot be demonstrated by examination, while other and perhaps more important qualifications can be so demonstrated. ”

“ Since they have been taken out of the classified service for such a reason, who is there to test the “judicial temperament” of the candidates? The Secretary of the Treasury himself cannot do it, being occupied with too many other duties. ”

“ While its friends have recently suffered a grievous disappointment, they have no reason for being discouraged. To retrieve the lost ground and to advance their cause further toward the final consummation, they have only to follow their old course with militant courage and constancy ”

“ An effort is being made to bring to justice those who have violated the law by the levying of assessments in the case mentioned as well as in another case, on the ground of an opinion recently rendered by ex-Senator Edmunds, who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate which reported the statute in question ”

“ The combination of these forces is an old one. It is expert in its business, and it will never do to underestimate its strength. How formidable it may become, we have in these days again had occasion for observing. ”