Civil 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. ”

“ Political fortunes of parties will ebb and flow; top policy men in administrations will come and go; new laws will be passed and old ones amended or repealed. But those who give continuity to administration, those who contribut the basic skill and efficiency to the daily work of government, and those on whom the new as well as the old administration is dependent for smooth functioning of the complicated machinery of modern government are the core of the civil service. ”

“ The course of civil-service reform in this country instructively and interestingly illustrates how strong a hold a movement gains upon our people which has underlying it a sentiment of justice and right and which at the same time promises better administration of their Government. ”

“ The civil officials with which the public is most familiar are postal employees, officers of the federal courts, and revenue officials. Such persons usually hold office while their party is in power or during good behavior. Long tenure of office tends to conservative measures and the spirit of bureaucracy, while a system by which civil office is regarded as party spoil tends to corruption and inefficiency. The business of administration is becoming increasingly important in the modern state. ”

“ Government departments and officials would be multiplied in order to cope with the necessary increase of routine work, the executive and judicial functions would be carefully separated, and the individual civil servant would become a mere member or mouthpiece of a single department, instead of uniting in his own person—as he does at present—half a dozen different executive functions and wide discretionary powers with regard to general administration. ”

“ I am, if possible, more than ever convinced of the incalculable benefits conferred by the civil-service law, not only in its effect upon the public service, but also, what is even more important, in its effect in elevating the tone of political life generally. ”

“ Believing that to reform the system and methods of the civil service in our country is one of the highest and most imperative duties of statesmanship, and that it can be permanently done only by the cooperation of the legislative and executive departments of the Government, I again commend the whole subject to your considerate attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is now the national civil service law. The fundamental principles of this law are:— (1) selection by competitive examination for all appointments to the “classified service,” with a period of probationary service before absolute appointment; (2) apportionment among the states and territories, according to population, of all appointments in the departmental service at Washington; (3) freedom of all the employees of the government from any necessity to contribute to political campaign funds or to render political services. ”

“ It cannot be necessary to enter into any lengthened argument for the purpose of showing the high importance of the Permanent Civil Service of the country in the present day. The great and increasing accumulation of public business, and the consequent pressure upon the Government, need only to be alluded to ”

“ That the Permanent Civil Service, with all its defects, essentially contributes to the proper discharge of the functions of Government, has been repeatedly admitted by those who have successively been responsible for the conduct of our affairs. ”

“ The civil service law was placed upon the statute book at the instance of those who had made the study of municipal government a duty, and who from that study realized that the growth of great cities, in population, material wealth and industrial development, demands commensurate changes in the manner of governing such communities. ”

“ The members of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments of thirteen and more States, the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county, corporation, and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed, and having particular acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed, beyond all proportion, both in number and influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system. ”

“ To establish a civil service system by means of which the routine offices and employments of the commonwealth may be filled by appointments made after ascertainment of qualifications and fitness, and the incumbents of such offices may retain them during good behavior. ”

“ I think the economy, purity, and efficiency of the public service would be greatly promoted by their systematic introduction, wherever practicable, throughout the entire civil service of the Government, together with ample provision for their general supervision in order to secure consistency and uniform justice. ”

“ The subject of civil service reform, which also formed a prominent feature of our platform in 1870, has attracted the attention of the people in a higher degree than ever before. That the President has adopted and promised to carry out a plan of reform proposed to him by the Civil Service Commission must by no means be taken as an indication that the cause of reform is now safe. ”

“ This is the clearest and completest program of civil service reform ever put forth by a public man in this Republic. Not a single essential point is forgotten,—and what is more, there is in it no vagueness or equivocation of statement or promise. ”

“ The new duties and responsibilities would make the demand for the appointment of honest and capable officials even greater than it is at present, and would, therefore, promote the cause of civil-service reform. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We all know that, as we owe to our legislative bodies the enactment of the existing Civil Service Laws, so it is in the legislative bodies that the most dangerous attempts are made to circumvent or subvert them. ”

“ The mere fact that appointment to so many offices has been taken from the discretion of the executive means that so many the fewer friends can be rewarded. The successive reports of the Civil Service Commission show that, although every campaign brings to light new methods of circumventing the law, assessments are really becoming much less common ”

“ The gentlemen who have given their services, without compensation, as members of the board to devise rules and regulations for the government of the civil service of the country have shown much zeal and earnestness in their work, and to them, as well as to myself, it will be a source of mortification if it is to be thrown away. But I repeat that it is impossible to carry this system to a successful issue without general approval and assistance and positive law to support it. ”

“ We are likely to have a fierce fight about the civil service law in Congress next winter. In my humble opinion a strong word in favor of the merit system in your annual message, and some out spoken statements to the same effect in the reports of the Secretaries, especially those of the three great patronage Departments, the Treasury, the Post-Office and the Interior, would be half the battle. ”

“ As political questions they will not be considered by us. But, as facts tending to show the nature and extent of the compact, which binds the state and the federal government together, and, particularly, to show how, to what extent, and under what circumstances, the state may sustain, and exercise its legitimate authority in the municipal administration of the state government, it becomes highly important to do so. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Defining the object of civil government, in the most extensive sense, to be the making provision for the secure and comfortable enjoyment of this life, by preventing one man from injuring another in his person or property; I should think the office of the civil magistrate to be in no great danger of being incroached upon, by the methods that men might think proper to take, to provide for their happiness after death. ”

“ The points, moreover, which constitute good management of these things are the same every where; there is no good reason why police, or jails, or the administration of justice should be differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another, while there is great peril that in things so important, and to which the most instructed minds available to the state are not more than adequate, the lower average of capacities which alone can be counted on for the service of the localities might commit errors of such magnitude as to be a serious blot upon the general administration of the country. ”

“ Commendable as this practice was, it did foster in the service a bureaucratic feeling, and in the public an apprehension lest government officers should consider themselves a class. An examination of the various Blue Books shows, moreover, that sons were often appointed to succeed fathers, which increased the disapprobation. A bureaucracy is always aristocratic ”

“ The commission may render valuable services by examining with special care the legislative needs of the various groups of inhabitants, and by reporting, with recommendations, the measures which should be instituted for the maintenance of order, peace, and public welfare, either as temporary steps to be taken immediately for the perfection of present administration, or as suggestions for future legislation. ”

“ That it is the duty of the Federal government, in all its departments, to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in the territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends. ”

“ Thus it will be seen that all departments of the government, legislative, judicial, and executive, are placed entirely beyond any responsibility to the people, whose agents they profess to be, and whose rights they assume to dispose of at pleasure. ”

“ Each executive department has certain public functions and duties, the performance of which is absolutely necessary to the existence of the government, but it may temporarily, at least, operate with seeming harshness upon individuals. ”

“ To each State is left the care and supervision of those matters which directly and exclusively concern the citizens of the State, and thus individuality and initiative in the development of local spirit and character, are stimulated and encouraged, but those matters which properly concern the people as a whole are cared for by the representatives of the people in one department or another of the National Government. ”

“ The Public Administration shall serve the general interest in a spirit of objectivity and shall act in accordance with the principles of efficiency, hierarchy, decentralization, deconcentration and coordination, and in full subordination to the law. ”

“ The very idea of a government composed of executive, legislative, and judicial departments necessarily comprehends the power to do all things, through its appropriate officers and agents, within the scope of its general governmental purposes and powers, requisite to preserve its existence, protect it and its ministers, and give it complete efficiency in all its parts. ”

“ If it fell into those of its enemies, it could probably be much relaxed without any great surface changes; in fact, the conditions in some of our states and cities show that the working of the law depends almost entirely upon the animus of the controlling political forces. ”