Carl Schurz

“ Here is the leader of a great party engaged in a most important contest. The character of the government, the welfare of the greatest city of the republic, one of the greatest cities of the world, is at stake. But this is nothing to him. All he things of is not the interest of three and a half millions of people, not the prosperity and good name of one of the world's most important emporiums of commerce and industry—what he thinks of is simply the spoils of office—patronage. ”

“ So long as public offices are a matter of patronage to any extend, so long will that patronage exercise a demoralizing influence and constitute a most serious danger to the working of our democratic institutions. ”

“ Civil service reform has with signal success passed the period of uncertain trial. Every executive officer is now compelled to admit—and the more conscientious he is, the more emphatically he will admit it—that those branches of the public service in which the civil service rules, and especially the competitive principle, are most strictly enforced, the work to be done is most attentively attended to and most satisfactorily performed. ”

“ To secure to the people an honest and efficient public service, and to eliminate, as much as possible, the demoralizing element of patronage and political and personal favoritism from our public life. The first is accomplished by subjecting candidates for public employment to examinations and probations testing their fitness for such employment; and the second by making such examinations competitive, so as to give the fittest man the best chance for appointment, and to exclude appointment by favoritism, personal or political, and thus the use of the office concerned as party spoil. ”

“ We do not pretend that civil service reform, if ever so successfully carried on, will prove a panacea for all the ills the body politic is heir to; that it will furnish a public service in point of efficiency and honesty absolutely perfect ”

“ In the first place all the patronage mongers in Congress who have seduced officers of the Government into crooked dealings, should be exposed to public view. There are, it may be hoped, not many of them. But the efforts which are said to be making in Congress to withhold the whole of the papers connected with the Bristow investigation from public knowledge, after the notorious failure of Congressional investigations, create, as the matter now stands, a very general suspicion which the innocent ones should consider it a duty to themselves to dissipate as much as possible by exposing the guilty. ”

“ But I do believe that civil service reform, by destroying the patronage and thus eliminating from political life one of those active elements of sordid selfishness, which divert political parties from their true functions, will render those parties much more fit to deal with other important problems, and thereby greatly facilitate their successful solution. ”

“ It requires only the plainest common sense to see that such a system is not likely to inspire the person so appointed to office with a keen sense of official responsibility. It will not incite him to do his best or to be scrupulously correct in his conduct. It will rather encourage the idea that he has been put in office to hive him a comfortable berth, and that, if, in trying to make a good thing of it, he does something reprehensible, there will be influence behind him powerful enough to get him out of the scrape. ”

“ And although it has been asserted by the detractors of the merit system—and with an appearance of truth—that competitive examinations cannot test a candidate's integrity of character, many years's experience has proved beyond question that among the public servants who entered the service upon competitive examination, the number of cases of official dishonesty has been infinitesimally small compared with the number of such cases among those who obtained their places by mere political influence or favoritism. ”

“ Men's motives of conduct are not seldom seriously affected by the circumstances under which they live. The person appointed to the office under the old spoils system usually obtains his place as a reward for political service rendered or in expectation of some political service to be rendered. He knows that he has more or less powerful political influence behind him. As that influence put him into office, he relies upon that influence to keep him in office also, in case his conduct be not as good as it should be. ”

“ The most confirmed optimists can now hardly fail to open their eyes to the fact that in the description of existing abuses and evil tendencies, we have rather understated than overcolored the truth, and that those abuses and evil tendencies, unless counteracted by thorough reforms, are certain to produce still greater mischief and shame. We can now confidently call upon all friends of good government in the Republic, at least to inquire into and study the measures we advocate, with open minds. ”

“ Now, on the other hand, contemplate the situation of the public servant who has entered upon his place through the portal of the competitive examination. To begin with, he is proud of owing his success not to the favor of anybody, but to his own personal merit; and there is nothing that stimulates a healthy ambition more than just pride of achievement. ”

“ Civil service reform is happily not a partisan affair. It is neither Republican nor Democratic in a party sense. On each side of the dividing line it has its friends as well as its adversaries. Each party has at times declared itself emphatically in its favor, and certain elements in each party have sedulously co-operated with similar elements in the other party to nullify those declarations. ”

“ Indeed, there have been Congressional investigations of the Post-Office Department, by the Senate, as well as the House, but they always stopped short of the evil doers who, knowing too much, held Congress in the hollow of their hands. So much more credit is due to the executive who let light into the dark places. ”

“ Indeed the governments of our large cities have become a matter of national concern, and no man can call himself a consistent friend of good government in general and a faithful defender of the Nation's welfare and good name, who would not apply the same rule that he thinks good for a department official or revenue clerk, also to our police officers, firemen and school-teachers. ”

“ There are others in other States fully as powerful and fully as vicious. There will be such in every State if the demoralizing influences which are bred and stimulated, among other causes, by the spoils system, are much longer permitted to corrupt and degrade political parties. The general, or even as extensive, use of the public offices and employments as party spoil cannot fail to make our party-contests, which should be only struggles for the prevalence of different principles and policies, in great- measure scrambles for public plunder ”

“ It thus throws temptations into his way very dangerous to a character that is not fireproof. It is therefore not surprising that among the public servants so appointed there should be so many going astray to a more or less serious extent, as shown by the recent report on frauds. But the real wonder is that, considering the seductive opportunities, there should be so few of them. For it must be admitted, that even under the spoils system of appointment a great many of the public servants have done their duty, as they understand it, and kept their integrity intact. ”

“ While not indulging in the delusion that all the difficulties and obstacles standing in our way will yield at once, or that we can clear them at one great jump, we have good reason to be encouraged in our efforts gradually to overcome them. ”

“ The corruption and rottenness recently revealed as having long existed in some parts of our Government machinery, and frankly denounced by the President himself in his message, are sufficiently alarming to shake the many well meaning people who so far have put aside our appeals with apathetic unconcern, out of their indifference. ”

“ In spite of their incessant and wily manoeuvers we have steadily gained ground, now more slowly and then more rapidly.
The progress of our cause has sometimes received a powerful impulse from events which startled the popular conscience. ”

“ At any rate, he and all the other malefactors in the Post-Office Department thought themselves similarly fortified, for according to the Bristow report they carried on their business of “getting rich quick” with a recklessness which can hardly be explained on any other than the theory that they expected their many obliged friends in Congress would prevent any investigation thorough enough to find them out for fear of being found out themselves. ”