Administrative reform

“ Also important to the success of the Nation’s socio-economic program is the need for administrative reforms that would bring about more effective coordination among government offices and agencies commonly seeking the same objectives. Such administrative reforms could include decentralization of public powers to stimulate more participation in government by elective officials at the levels most proximate to the people. ”

“ This distinction between administration and policy is not always clear, but it is always important. Attempts at reform usually begin with an effort to correct administrative abuses, but eventually it turns out that reforms must go deeper and change the character of the institutions themselves. ”

“ By this belief many of the patriotic citizens have been kept attached to it, although their opinions on some important points of policy differ from those of the majority of its members — men, I mean, to whom the cause of administrative reform is supreme, because they think that if that reform in its best sense is thoroughly accomplished it will impart a new intellectual and moral life to the working of our institutions, facilitating the treatment of other problems on their merits and produce far-reaching results of a permanent character. ”

“ for, if the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be. There is, however, an old indisputable, very well known story, which has so pointed a moral at the end of it that I will substitute it for a new case: by doing of which I may avoid, I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen’s. ”

“ I ask the attention of the public to the paramount necessity of reform in our civil service—a reform not merely as to certain abuses and practices of so-called official patronage which have come to have the sanction of usage in the several Departments of our Government, but a change in the system of appointment itself; a reform that shall be thorough, radical, and complete ”

“ He will therefore have every inducement to lend a helping hand in the introduction of a thorough and permanent reform of the civil service, which, proceeding upon the idea that established character, knowledge and capability ought to be the only test of fitness for office, will at last give the country an able, honest and economical administration of the public business. ”

“ In one word, if you want to have a reform Administration, you must have, at least at the head of the three great “patronage” Departments, the Treasury, the Post-Office and the Interior, men who understand reform as you do, who believe in it as you do, who are willing to fight for it as you are and who will not be swerved from their purpose by any political seduction, even if they should be prospective candidates for the Presidency—the severest trial to which the political virtue of a public man can be exposed. ”

“ It is agreed that a reform of our Government is indispensable, and that a stronger Federal System must be adopted; but it will ever be found, that let your System upon paper be as complete, and guarded as you can make it, yet still if the State Assemblies are suffered to legislate without restriction or revision, your Government will remain weak, disjointed, and inefficient. ”

“ The Administration would thereby add to the many excellent things it has already done for the cause of civil service reform another one, and, indeed, one no less important than any of them, and thus encourage the hope, which we all confidently cherish, that it will carry the work as far onward as Executive action can carry it. ”

“ The reform of the civil service will make no safe or satisfactory advance until the present law and its equal administration are well established in the confidence of the people. It will be my pleasure, as it is my duty, to see that the law is executed with firmness and impartiality. If some of its provisions have been fraudulently evaded by appointing officers, our resentment should not suggest the repeal of the law, but reform in its administration. ”

“ The problem of civil service reform is rendered difficult by a misalliance between the Executive and the Legislative branches of our Federal Government. Those Members of Congress who favor the Administration habitually claim and are awarded a virtual monopoly of the Federal offices in their respective States or districts, dictating appointments and removals as interest or caprice may suggest. ”

“ In my message to Congress one year ago I urgently recommended a reform in the civil service of the country. In conformity with that recommendation Congress, in the ninth section of "An act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government, and for other purposes," approved March 3, 1871, gave the necessary authority to the Executive to inaugurate a civil-service reform, and placed upon him the responsibility of doing so. Under the authority of said act I convened a board of gentlemen eminently qualified for the work to devise rules and regulations to effect the needed reform. ”

“ The Government meant to obtain in the current year three distinct things: (1) the maintenance intact of the provisions for necessitous school areas, feeding of school children, nursing, measures against tuberculosis, and national insurance; (2) statutory authority for a more generous system of payment of grants during the next financial year; (3) statutory authority for a new system of valuation separating site from improvement value. Anyone who voted for the amendment was tending to put off social reform. ”

“ Notwithstanding the opposition of politicians and newspapers representing the vicious and ignorant element, civil service reform has made marvelous progress, and the principle is now recognized not only in appointments to the vast majority of non-elective offices under the National Government, but also in the civil service of States and municipalities. ”

“ President Grant continued his efforts, and constantly presented the matter to Congress, at last announcing on December 7, 1874: “If Congress adjourns without positive legislation on the subject of ‘civil service reform’ I will regard such action as a disapproval of the system, and will abandon it, except so far as to require examinations for certain appointees, to determine their fitness. Competitive examinations will be abandoned.” ”

“ I believe, however, that the widest possible application of civil service reform principles to all the departments of municipal government is not merely a desirable, but an indispensable complement of all the other reforms, for it touches the most of the evil ”

“ Those who have either themselves remodelled the framework of State constitutions, or proposed schemes of political reform, seem mostly to have studied how to apportion the respective provinces which the nation, and any of its separate elements, should justly share in the administration,—to assign the due functions of each in the governmental plan,—and to adopt the precautions necessary for preserving the integrity of the several interests at stake. ”

“ It is certain—at any rate it is clear to everybody here—that civil service reform measures have little if any chance of success in Congress, unless we manage to produce a pressure. And there is nothing so available and so easy within reach as this law, of which everybody knows that it will have to be amended. ”

“ We cannot afford to suffer anything that remains below that standard to pass, unchallenged, as the Civil Service Reform we are aiming at. We certainly recognize the difficulties to be overcome, but we must insist that they be overcome. ”

“ In conclusion, Honorable Judges, the solution of the American city problem will be best promoted by a program of reform which strikes at the real causes of the evils, instead of the universal overturning of all traditions and theories of government in the hope of finding a short-cut road to municipal success. ”

“ The mere resuscitation of the old system will either expose the administration of justice to inconceivable embarrassments, or demonstrate the motive to be abstractedly a party one, by calling for an immediate reform. The clamour of the federalists will at least have a reasonable foundation. ”

“ Some organized control over the legislative proposals submitted to popular approval is absolutely necessary; and the sort of control suggested above merely conforms to the existing unofficial practice of those states wherein public opinion has been aroused. The best reform legislation now enacted usually originates in executive mansions. Why should not the practice be made official? If it were so, every candidate for governor would have to announce either a definite legislative policy or the lack of one ”

“ In the effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. ”

“ In public administration, the most pressing need is for legislative action of the Reorganization Bill and the Revised Administrative Code, already submitted to Congress. We need to transform our administrative structure into the dynamic and synchronized machinery needed to perform effectively its role in economic development. ”

“ The only reason for the intervention of an administrative body is to exercise a grant of unexpended legislative power to weigh what the legislature wants weighed, to reduce conflicting abstract policies to a concrete net remainder of duty or right. ”

“ What Civil Service Reform demands, is simply that the business part of the Government shall be carried on in a sound, businesslike manner. This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common sense there should be no two opinions about it. And the condition of things to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves. ”

“ But with real anxiety I beg you to consider that, as your reform program is to be carried out, the most important and difficult task will fall upon the Treasury and Post-Office Departments with their immense machinery and responsibilities; that just there you will want to have men whose hearts are faithfully in that cause; who truly believe in it; upon whom you can absolutely depend that they have the necessary spirit and perseverance to effect that deliverance of the civil service from Congressional control which you so justly regard as the essential point of reform ”

“ In most of the cases which do come before him, he will have to trust the heads of the respective Departments for the information on which he is to act, for the reasons why this man should be removed and the other man should be appointed, while he himself has to bear the responsibility. Now, my experience is that the great danger of a reform Administration consists in the inclination of those engaged in it to admit exceptions to their rules. ”

“ When, therefore, I mentioned the chief features of a good charter and civil service reform and home rule as the features of the programme of reform, however much I valued these things in themselves, I valued them also as the removals of so many obstacles to the activity of the non-machine citizen. These reforms are intended to make it hard for the evil doers and easy for the righteous. But they are not panaceas, for it is not possible to get good city government to work automatically. ”

“ Everybody says there must be reform, so that the Government in all its branches shall be above suspicion. The cry for reform is everywhere,—from New York to New [Pg 7] Orleans. Within a few days we hear of a great meeting, amounting to ten thousand, in the latter city, without distinction of party, calling for reform; and the demand is echoed from place to place. Reform is becoming a universal watchword.
In harmony with this cry is the appointment of a Civil-Service Commission, which has proposed mild measures looking to purity and independence in office-holders. ”

“ Any practical scheme of local institutional reform must be based on the principle of more concentrated responsibility and power, and it must be reached by successive experimental attempts to give a more consistent and efficient form to actual American political practices. ”

“ It can not be expected that any system of rules can be entirely effective and prove a perfect remedy for the existing evils until they have been thoroughly tested by actual practice and amended according to the requirements of the service. During my term of office it shall be my earnest endeavor to so apply the rules as to secure the greatest possible reform in the civil service of the Government, but it will require the direct action of Congress to render the enforcement of the system binding upon my successors ”

“ Every increase of public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform, because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its favor. ”

“ All these tendencies are observable, and civil service reform is to be studied in connection with them and with all other political reform movements. Eternal vigilance, and not merely the mechanical selection of public officers, is the price of liberty. ”

“ It would be distrusting the intelligence and virtue of the people to doubt the speedy and efficient adoption of such measures of reform as the public good demands. All that can rightfully be done by the Federal Government to promote the accomplishment of that important object will without doubt be performed. ”