Good office

“ There is nothing but what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff; in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a good deal to attend to ”

“ That's the most important thing I can do when I leave office is to use the maximum--to the maximum extent I can, the knowledge that I have, the experience that I've gained to be a really good citizen. ”

“ I cannot hope, of course, to give a post office to everybody. I have endeavored in the selection of those who are to administer the functions of public office for the general Government to secure good men. ”

“ Of course, our paper has not been contrary; but we have noticed a good many times—every one in the office has noticed it, the boys and girls in the back-office, and the boys and girls in the front-office—that whenever we take a stand for anything, say for closing the stores at six o'clock, the General swings the Statesman into line against it. If he has done it once he has done it fifty times in the last ten years ”

“ Mayor, and Fellow-citizens—It is very grateful and very healthful to be so cordially received by you this morning. The office which I have been called upon to administer is very great in dignity, but it is very full of care and heavy responsibility. The man who with conscientious regard and a proper appreciation of the great trust seeks to administer it for the public good will find himself daily beset with perplexities and doubts, and daily besieged by those who differ with him as to the public administration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I talked the matter over, and decided to make the service during my term of office a close service, and to promote men already in the service to all vacancies as they occurred, making inspectors of auditors or clerks, and giving the good auditorships to the best men in the inferior ones. ”

“ So likewise even the generality are, in some degree, grateful and disposed to return good offices, not merely because such a one has been the occasion of good to them, but under the view, that such good offices implied kind intention and good desert in the doer. ”

“ This dislike springs from the apprehension that such men, with their conceptions of public duty, will be likely to act for the public interest upon motives with which the interests of the party have but little if anything at all to do — in other words, that being earnestly intent upon taking care of the public good, they will not make it their first business to “take care of the organization.” And to take care of the organization means mainly to distribute offices among its members. ”

“ Judged by the aggregate amount of work done, the last year has been the greatest in the history of the office. I believe that the organization of the office is efficient and that the work has been done with fidelity. ”

“ The only charm of high office consists in the opportunities it furnishes for doing some service, but its honors are not an equivalent for its burdens. I for my part thoroughly appreciate the privileges of private station, and have learned to look at public life and its struggles in a contemplative and judicial mood. ”

“ It is the duties of the office, not a run of infirmities peculiar to the incumbents of office, that make the outcome. Very much like that of the medicine-man, the office is one which will not abide a tolerant and ingenuous incumbent. ”

“ The office, unfortunately, is regarded as one of great dignity, and puts the holder on a level with the highest society, and compels him to associate on equal terms with men who spend more than my whole income on the mere entertainments and other trimmings and embroidery of their lives. ”

“ Up there in the big office-rooms, year in year out, these refined, well-educated women kept ledgers and accounts and did the general office work of the Civil Service with a precision and neatness and correctness equal to the work of any men, and invariably to the astonishment of any interested visitor who was permitted to inquire into the system. ”

“ When you tell me that such a casual remark about preferring private station must be taken as a conclusive reason against bringing that man forward for office, if he is otherwise fit and desirable, you will certainly not expect me to receive that statement without a smile. Have we not both heard it said many a time that not the man should seek the office, but the office the man? Do we not both remember many instances when public men were urged and finally prevailed upon to take office, much against their original desire? ”

“ I do not now enter upon the point, that to magnify the office is not necessarily to exalt the individual who bears it; nay, that the thought which will most deeply humble the individual, most oppress him with the overwhelming sense of his own insufficiency, is the consciousness "into how high a dignity, and to how weighty an office and charge" he has been called; an office "of such excellency, and of so great difficulty." ”

“ I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. His office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences. ”

“ The increased industry of the Office, the improvement resulting from a thoughtful and careful performance of its duties, and the elevation of the standard which all seeking appointments must come up to, and a careful weeding-out of the inefficient ones, are rapidly tending to secure commendation from those having business with the Bureau, rather than censure. ”

“ In the first place, it is to be remembered that patronage acts, not only on those who actually possess office, but on those also who expect it, or hope for it; and in the next place, office-holders, by their very situation, their public station, their connection with the business of individuals, their activity, their ability to help or to hurt according to their pleasure, their acquaintance with public affairs, and their zeal and devotion, exercise a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers. ”

“ Officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of competitive examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders for doing the work at diminished salary. When once in office, every care is taken for their continual inspection by the public and the verification of their accounts. They are never for an instant to forget that they are servants, not the masters, of the public. ”

“ The duties of all public offices are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance; and I can not but believe that more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience. ”

“ Nowhere excepting at the central office is it possible to sound our work, to know its breadth, its depth, the permanency of its interest among our members, and its growth among the people. Here we can gauge its dimensions. And, perhaps, the first sign, and certainly it is a most significant one, is that which every casual visitor at our business headquarters must observe at once, as he looks in upon the busy workers of the office; the work is too big for its quarters. ”

“ If you wanted to learn it you had to go not only to the Paymaster General's office and make an inquiry there, but you had to go from one office to another in order to pick up your information by little items. ”

“ Let us suppose, for instance, that there is a government office—not here but in some fairy kingdom—and let us suppose that in the office there is a head of the office. I beg you to look at him when he is sitting among his subordinates—one is simply too awe-stricken to utter a word. Pride and dignity ... and what else is not expressed upon his face? You should take a brush and paint him: a Prometheus, a perfect Prometheus! He looks like an eagle, he moves with a measured step. ”

“ If you put a body of very able men in charge of a department of public service, it is certain that they will magnify their office, take a disproportionate view of its claims, and incessantly strive to increase its functions and its staff. ”

“ The most usual source of office-holding is the humble work of the clerk, handyman or messenger, responsible for carrying out the nagging routine of government. Beyond this common labor of public service are public servants skilled in their several professions. Beyond and above them are department heads and still higher are the appointed or elected officials responsible for the success or failure of a given public policy. ”

“ They lurk in every Gov'ment lair,
⁠'Mid docket dull and dusty file,
Solemnly squat in an easy chair,
Penning a minute of rare hot air
⁠⁠In departmental style.
In every office, on every floor
⁠Are Swanks, and Swanks, distracting Swanks,
⁠⁠And Acting-Swanks a score. ”

“ To this holy office, you propose to devote yourselves. I wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. The office is the first in the world. It is of that reality, that it cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. ”

“ These men (the men who dispense the offices) soon come to assume an enormous importance in the minds of office-seekers. They watch all the movements of the political leaders with the greatest anxiety, and study every chance word that they let drop, as if it had some dark and awful significance. ”

“ The office is one of great honour as well as power, and has generally been conferred upon some individual distinguished by an influential position in society; so that his rank and character might reflect credit upon the craft. ”

“ The real evil of the service is promotion by routine, and not jobbing in the selection for superior places.279 But make your regulations what you [Pg 272] will, the sine qua non, to make any regulations work well, is that the men at the head of the different offices shall have discretion, honesty, and courage, and shall not be afraid to put up the good men and to keep the inferior men in their place. I am quite confident from my own experience that it can be done, but I am certain that it can be done only if the men at the head of the offices will take a good deal of trouble about it. ”

“ The office of the Executive falls into my hands at a peculiar period in our history as a State. Contemplating alone the vastness of its extent, the diversified interests of its people, and the character of its resources, yet undeveloped, there is enough to demand continued labor and attention, in order to apply the benefits of government with sound discretion, and a proper regard to the relative demands of each interest ”

“ The title is not the question, but it’s the office, which is known to the laws and to the people. They know their duty to a king and his to them. Whatever else there is will be wholly new, and upon the next occasion will be changed again. ”

“ As to the administration of the Post-Office, it requires so much of capacity for business management in detail and in great variety, and so high a degree of practical business training and habit of a peculiar kind which has so far to a great extent been foreign to my mind, that I should fear to undertake it, while I certainly recognize the very great importance of that Department with regard to the elevation of the civil service to a higher level of character and efficiency. ”

“ We favor the maintenance and the extension wherever practicable of the merit system in the public service, appointments to be made according to fitness, competitively ascertained, and public servants to be retained in office only so long as shall be compatible with the efficiency of the service. ”

“ My competitors for advancement were numerous, and more versed in the ways of the world than I. Like them, I was obliged to begin by paying a most assiduous attention to men in office. Having once gained the privilege of being seated in the mejlis (assembly) of the head of the law, who was in fact my chief, I little by little became noticed by the grand vizier, the lord high treasurer, the secretary of state, the chief executioner, and others. ”

“ The exercise of intrigue and backstair influence being a bar to office, the offices of government are filled with the most intelligent, upright, and valuable men in the country, selected with the sole view of promoting the best interests of the nation. ”

“ We have a comprehensive examination system in the civil service, and every officeholder, except members of the Cabinet, retains his office while efficiently performing his duty, without regard to politics. ”

“ It will be perceived that in speaking of the department the author has paid little or no attention to the rebellion in connection with its operations. Situated as he is in the department, his opportunities are such that if the business of the office has lessened, as is supposed, in consequence, there is not a man engaged but must truly say that, instead of such being the case, their labors, as well as the business of the office, never presented a more stirring and flourishing appearance. ”

“ It was there said that 'an office is a public station or employment conferred by the appointment of government. The term embraces the ideas of tenure, duration, emolument, and duties. . . . A government office is different from a government contract. ”