Civil service reform

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are some among us who stood at the cradle of the Civil Service Reform movement. They remember the time when the practical politician looked upon the Civil Service Reformer as a visionary dreamer of singularly hopeless conceit—as little better than a harmless idiot who might be tolerated at large without the slightest danger to the existing order of things. ”

“ And when, under such circumstances, we hear of the civil service reform inaugurated by this Administration, we have a right to call it an impudent mockery of the popular understanding, a barefaced jugglery attempted upon an intelligent people, the prostitution of a great cause. I trust the American people will show their appreciation of it by commencing the reform at the top. ”

“ WHAT I am going to say to you is not new, but it cannot be repeated too often, especially before the young men of America. There is a widespread impression that it is the only aim of civil service reform to provide the government with a more efficient class of public servants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Civil service reformers are well aware that while the competitive merit system furnishes, on the whole, a public service vastly superior to that furnished by the spoils system, it may occasionally fail to present for appointment the fittest man for the place to be filled, especially when experience or other particular qualifications are required, and that a strict application of the civil service rules may now and then work a grievance, on individuals, exciting the sympathy of the appointing power. ”

“ With the politicians who advocate a return to the spoils system it has become a favorite argument that civil service reform as embodied in the existing law is not popular, and that if the question whether it should be sustained or abandoned were submitted to a vote of the people, there would be a large majority adverse to it. ”

“ Our civil-service reform may be imperfect in some of its details; it may be misunderstood and opposed; it may not always be faithfully applied; its designs may sometimes miscarry through mistake or willful intent; it may sometimes tremble under the assaults of its enemies or languish under the misguided zeal of impracticable friends; but if the people of this country ever submit to the banishment of its underlying principle from the operation of their Government they will abandon the surest guaranty of the safety and success of American institutions. ”

“ Such conditions the elimination of spoils politics from our public life will powerfully help to secure; and we may all say, therefore, that civil service reform is prominently the cause of the young American who hopes to serve the republic with honor to himself and profit to the country. ”

“ At bottom, the present attack on the merit system is, in large part, a reappearance of the old jealousy of the executive so many times illustrated in the history of the patronage. [26]
What has enabled civil service reform to progress, unpopular as it has been because of its foreign origin, and interfering, as it has done, with our established political institutions? Why have not the congressmen, who have been deprived of the means of sustaining their political machines, and more than half of whom are probably hostile to the system, risen in successful revolt? ”

“ Not only has it in this region some of its most faithful advocates, but the practical sense and the public spirit which have wrought here such wonders, seem to produce the very atmosphere in which this cause should prosper; for Civil Service Reform is, in the sense of an enlightened, large and patriotic public spirit, a preëminently practical conception—practical in its principles, practical in its aims, and practical in its methods. ”

“ Whatever obstacles and adverse influences there may be in its path, civil-service reform is bound in the end to triumph. I speak of this with great confidence. The time is fast approaching when every good citizen, however indifferent to-day, will acknowledge its necessity. ”

“ And this is the feature of civil service reform which I would commend for the especially earnest consideration to our young men. They must look forward to the day when their duties as citizens will call them to the field of public activity. It must be their desire, as it certainly is their interest, that they should enter that field under conditions encouraging a pure and high-minded devotion to the public good; conditions permitting them to rise without imposing any tax upon their self-respect ”

“ What qualifications have you for serving the people? Have you more than other candidates for the place?” On the one side, under the spoils system, the aristocracy of influence—and a very vulgar aristocracy it is—robbing the man who has only merit unbacked by power, of his rightful chance. On the other hand, civil service reform, inviting all freely to compete, and then giving the best chance to the best man, be that man ever so lowly, and be his competitor ever so great a favorite of wealth or power. ”

“ If it is true, and I am profoundly convinced of that truth, that under the spoils system it is simply impossible to keep up a reasonably efficient and honest civil service, and that the service will grow the more corrupt the longer the spoils system exists, then nothing can be clearer than that we must have a change which is genuine—thorough reform, including the abolition of that system. What is civil service reform? ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ One mode of the misappropriation of public funds is avoided when appointments to office, instead of being the rewards of partisan activity, are awarded to those whose efficiency promises a fair return of work for the compensation paid to them. To secure the fitness and competency of appointees to office, and to remove from political action the demoralizing madness for spoils, civil service reform has found a place in our public policy and laws. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The dangers threatening civil service reform come no longer from open assault upon the merit system, but from insidious attempts to destroy its substance, while preserving its forms. You may hear many a politician who all his life has trained with the old spoils guard, now deliver himself in this wise: “Civil service reform? ”

“ Men have begun to respect and to love it for the enemies it has made. We have not far to seek for the reason. What is civil service reform? It is the application of common-sense and common honesty to the public service. And the American people are in the main a sensible and an honest people. ”

“ It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government. We therefore regard a thorough reform of the civil service as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour; that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claims to public employment; that the offices of the government cease to be a matter of arbitrary favoritism and patronage and that public station shall become again a post of honor. To this end it is imperatively required that no President shall be a candidate for re-election. ”

“ That, then, is genuine civil service reform.
What patriotic man is there who will not recognize that the evils from which the body-politic suffers absolutely require so thorough a measure of change, and who will not eagerly embrace every opportunity to secure it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The idea of Civil Service Reform—promotion for the good men in your employ rather than hiring new ones for the big places—is a rule which looks well on paper but is a fatal policy if carried out to the letter. ”

“ Whether a further withdrawal of the offices from politics will prove to be possible, depends upon circumstances. Practically we may omit the supposition that a modern democracy could exist without parties; it may be possible, but it is a condition which lies far in the future. Under existing conditions the possibility of a complete civil service reform, as generally understood, depends upon whether our parties can be convinced that they can exist without their present elaborate organizations, or can maintain these organizations without the cohesive power of the public offices. ”