VIISIX YEARS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM[13]
No question of internal administration is so important to the United States as the question of Civil Service reform, because the spoils system, which can only be supplanted through the agencies which have found expression in the act creating the Civil Service Commission, has been for seventy years the most potent of all the forces tending to bring about the degradation of our politics. No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base; and the spoils system, the application in political life of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belong the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. The man who is in politics for the offices might just as well be in politics for the money he can get for his vote, so far as the general good is concerned. When the then Vice-President of the United States, Mr. Hendricks,said that he “wished to take the boys in out of the cold to warm their toes,” thereby meaning that he wished to distribute offices among the more active heelers, to the rapturous enthusiasm of the latter, he uttered a sentiment which was morally on the same plane with a wish to give “the boys” five dollars apiece all around for their votes, and fifty dollars apiece when they showed themselves sufficiently active in bullying, bribing, and cajoling other voters. Such a sentiment should bar any man from public life, and will bar him whenever the people grow to realize that the worst enemies of the Republic are the demagogue and the corruptionist. The spoils-monger and spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and bribe-giver, the embezzler of public funds and the corrupter of voters. Civil Service reform is not merely a movement to better the public service. It achieves this end too; but its main purpose is to raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direction that its effects have been of incalculable good to the whole community.
For six years, from May, 1889, to May, 1895, I was a member of the National Civil Service Commission, and it seems to me to be of interest to show exactly what has been done to advance the law and what to hinder its advancement during these six years, and who have been the more prominent among its friends and foes. I wish to tell “the adventures of Philip on his way through the world,” and show who robbed him, who helped him, and who passed him by. It would take toolong to give the names of all our friends, and it is not worth while to more than allude to most of our foes and to most of those who were indifferent to us; but a few of the names should be preserved and some record made of the fights that have been fought and won and of the way in which, by fits and starts, and with more than one set-back, the general advance has been made.
Of the Commission itself little need be said. When I took office the only Commissioner was Mr. Charles Lyman, of Connecticut, who resigned when I did. Honorable Hugh S. Thompson, ex-Governor of South Carolina, was made Commissioner at the same time that I was, and after serving for three years resigned. He was succeeded by Mr. George D. Johnston, of Louisiana, who was removed by the President in November, 1893, being replaced by Mr. John R. Procter, the former State Geologist of Kentucky, who is still serving. The Commission has never varied a hand’s-breadth from its course throughout this time; and Messrs. Thompson, Procter, Lyman, and myself were always a unit in all important questions of policy and principle. Our aim was always to procure the extension of the classified service as rapidly as possible, and to see that the law was administered thoroughly and fairly. The Commission does not have the power that it should, and in many instances there have been violations or evasions of the law in particular bureaus or departments which the Commission was not able to prevent. In every case, however, we made a resolute fight, and gavethe widest publicity to the wrong-doing. Often, even where we have been unable to win the actual fight in which we were engaged, the fact of our having made it, and the further fact that we were ready to repeat it on provocation, has put a complete stop to the repetition of the offence. As a consequence, while there have been plenty of violations and evasions of the law, yet their proportion was really very small, taking into account the extent of the service. In the aggregate it is doubtful if one per cent. of all the employees have been dismissed for political reasons. In other words, where under the spoils system a hundred men would have been turned out, under the Civil Service Law, as administered under our supervision, ninety-nine men were kept in.
In the administration of the law very much depends upon the Commission. Good heads of departments and bureaus will administer it well anyhow; but not only the bad men, but also the large class of men who are weak rather than bad, are sure to administer the law poorly unless kept well up to the mark. The public should exercise a most careful scrutiny over the appointment and over the acts of Civil Service Commissioners, for there is no office the effectiveness of which depends so much upon the way in which the man himself chooses to construe his duties. A Commissioner can keep within the letter of the law and do his routine work and yet accomplish absolutely nothing in the way of securing the observance of the law. The Commission, to do useful work, must befearless and vigilant. It must actively interfere whenever wrong is done, and must take all the steps that can be taken to secure the punishment of the wrong-doer and to protect the employee threatened with molestation.
This course was consistently followed by the Commission throughout my connection with it. I was myself a Republican from the North. Messrs. Thompson and Procter were from the South, and were both Democrats who had served in the Confederate armies; and it would be impossible for anyone to desire as associates two public men with higher ideals of duty, or more resolute in their adherence to those ideals. It is unnecessary to say that in all our dealings there was no single instance wherein the politics of any person or the political significance of any action was so much as taken into account in any case that arose. The force of the Commission itself was all chosen through the competitive examinations, and included men of every party and from every section of the country; and I do not believe that in any public or private office of the size it would be possible to find a more honest, efficient, and coherent body of workers.
From the beginning of the present system each President of the United States has been its friend, but no President has been a radical Civil Service reformer. Presidents Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland have all desired to see the service extended, and to see the law well administered. No one of them has felt willing or able to do all that the reformers asked, or to pay much heed totheir wishes save as regards that portion of the service to which the law actually applied. Each has been a sincere party man, who has felt strongly on such questions as those of the tariff, of finance, and of our foreign policy, and each has been obliged to conform more or less closely to the wishes of his party associates and fellow party leaders; and, of course, these party leaders, and the party politicians generally, wished the offices to be distributed as they had been ever since Andrew Jackson became President. In consequence the offices outside the protection of the law have still been treated, under every administration, as patronage, to be disposed of in the interest of the dominant party. An occasional exception was made here and there. The postmaster at New York, a Republican, was retained by President Cleveland in his first administration, and the postmaster of Charleston, a Democrat, was retained by President Harrison; but, with altogether insignificant exceptions, the great bulk of the non-classified places have been changed for political reasons by each administration, the office-holders politically opposed to the administration being supplanted or succeeded by political adherents of the administration.
Where the change has been complete it does not matter much whether it was made rapidly or slowly. Thus, the fourth-class postmasterships were looted more rapidly under the administration of President Harrison than under that of President Cleveland, and the consular service more rapidly underPresident Cleveland than under President Harrison; but the final result was the same in both cases. Indeed, I think that the brutality which accompanied the greater speed was in some ways of service to the country, for it directed attention to the iniquity and folly of the system, and emphasized, in the minds of decent citizens, the fact that appointments and removals for political reasons in places where the duties are wholly non-political cannot be defended by any man who looks at public affairs from the proper standpoint.
The advance has been made purely on two lines, that is, by better enforcement of the law, and by inclusion under the law, or under some system similar in its operations, of a portion of the service previously administered in accordance with the spoils theory. Under President Arthur the first classification was made, which included 14,000 places. Under President Cleveland, during his first term, the limits of the classified service were extended by the inclusion of 7000 additional places. During President Harrison’s term the limit was extended by the inclusion of about eight thousand places; and hitherto during President Cleveland’s second term, by the inclusion of some six thousand places; in addition to which the natural growth of the service has been such that the total number of offices now classified is over forty thousand. Moreover, the Secretary of the Navy under President Harrison, introduced into the navy yards a system of registration of laborers, which secures the end desired by the Commission;and Secretary Herbert has continued this system. It only rests, however, upon the will of the Secretary of the Navy; and as we cannot expect always to have secretaries as clear-sighted as Messrs. Tracy and Herbert, it is most desirable that this branch of the service should be put directly under the control of the Commission.
The Cabinet officers, though often not Civil Service reformers to start with, usually become such before their terms of office expire. This was true, without exception, of all the Cabinet officers with whom I was personally brought into contact while on the Commission. Moreover, from their position and their sense of responsibility they are certain to refrain from violating the law themselves and to try to secure at least a formal compliance with its demands on the part of their subordinates. In most cases it is necessary, however, to goad them continually to see that they do not allow their subordinates to evade the law; and it is very difficult to get either the President or the head of a department to punish these subordinates when they have evaded it. There is not much open violation of the law, because such violation can be reached through the courts; but in the small offices and small bureaus there is often a chance for an unscrupulous head of the office or bureau to persecute his subordinates who are politically opposed to him into resigning, or to trump up charges against them on which they can be dismissed. If this is done in a sufficient number of cases, men of the opposite political party think that it is useless toenter the examinations; and by staying out they leave the way clear for the offender to get precisely the men he wishes for the eligible registers. Cases like this continually occur, and the Commission has to be vigilant in detecting and exposing them, and in demanding their punishment by the head of the office. The offender always, of course, insists that he has been misunderstood, and in most cases he can prepare quite a specious defence. As he is of the same political faith as the head of the department, and as he is certain to be backed by influential politicians, the head of the department is usually loath to act against him, and, if possible, will let him off with, at most, a warning not to repeat the offence. In some departments this kind of evasion has never been tolerated; and where the Commission has the force under its eye, as in the departments at Washington, the chance of injustice is minimized. Nevertheless, there have been considerable abuses of this kind, notably in the custom-houses and post-offices, throughout the time I have been at Washington. So far as the Post-Office Department was concerned the abuses were more flagrant under President Harrison’s Postmaster-General, Mr. Wanamaker; but in the Treasury Department they were more flagrant under President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Carlisle.
Congress has control of the appropriations for the Commission, and as it cannot do its work without an ample appropriation the action of Congress is vital to its welfare. Many, even of the friendsof the system in the country at large, are astonishingly ignorant of who the men are who have battled most effectively for the law and for good government in either the Senate or the Lower House. It is not only necessary that a man shall be good and possess the desire to do decent things, but it is also necessary that he shall be courageous, practical, and efficient, if his work is to amount to anything. There is a good deal of rough-and-tumble fighting in Congress, as there is in all our political life, and a man is entirely out of place in it if he does not possess the virile qualities, and if he fails to show himself ready and able to hit back when assailed. Moreover, he must be alert, vigorous, and intelligent if he is going to make his work count. The friends of the Civil Service Law, like the friends of all other laws, would be in a bad way if they had to rely solely upon the backing of the timid good. During the last six years there have been, as there always are, a number of men in the House who believe in the Civil Service Law, and who vote for it if they understand the question and are present when it comes up, but who practically count for very little one way or the other, because they are timid or flighty, or are lacking in capacity for leadership or ability to see a point and to put it strongly before their associates.
There is need of further legislation to perfect and extend the law and the system; but Congress has never been willing seriously to consider a proposition looking to this extension. Bills to provide for the appointment of fourth-class postmastershave been introduced by Senator Lodge and others, but have never come to anything. Indeed, but once has a measure of this kind been reported from committee and fought for in either House. This was in the last session of the 53d Congress, when Senators Morgan and Lodge introduced bills to reform the consular service. They were referred to Senator Morgan’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, and were favorably reported. Senator Lodge made a vigorous fight for them in the Senate, but he received little support, and was defeated, Senator Gorman leading the opposition.
On the other hand, efforts to repeal the law, or to destroy it by new legislation, have uniformly been failures, and have rarely gone beyond committee. Occasionally, in an appropriation bill or some other measure, an amendment will be slipped through, adding forty or fifty employees to the classified service, or providing that the law shall not apply to them; but nothing important has ever been done in this way. But once has there been a resolute attack made on the law by legislation. This was in the 53d Congress, when Mr. Bynum, of Indiana, introduced in the House, and Mr. Vilas, of Wisconsin, pushed in the Senate, a bill to reinstate the Democratic railway mail clerks, turned out before the classification of the railway mail service in the early days of Mr. Harrison’s administration.
The classification of the railway mail service was ordered by President Cleveland less than two months before the expiration of his first term of office as President. It was impossible for the Commissionto prepare and hold the necessary examinations and establish eligible registers prior to May 1, 1889. President Harrison had been inaugurated on March 4th, and Postmaster-General Wanamaker permitted the spoilsmen to take advantage of the necessary delay and turn out half of the employees who were Democrats, and replace them by Republicans. This was an outrageous act, deserving the severe condemnation it received; but it was perfectly legal. During the four years of Mr. Cleveland’s first term a clean sweep was made of the railway mail service; the employees who were almost all Republicans, were turned out, and Democrats were put in their places. The result was utterly to demoralize the efficiency of the service. It had begun to recover from this when the change of administration took place in 1889. The time was too short to allow of a clean sweep, but the Republicans did all they could in two months, and turned out half of the Democrats. The law then went into effect, and since that time there have been no more removals for partisan purposes in that service. It has now recovered from the demoralization into which it was thrown by the two political revolutions, and has reached a higher standard of efficiency than ever before. What was done by the Republicans in this service was repeated, on a less scale, by the Democrats four years later in reference to the classification of the small free-delivery post-offices. This classification was ordered by President Harrison two months before his term of office expired; but in many of the offices it was impossible to hold examinations andprepare eligible registers until after the inauguration of President Cleveland, and in a number of cases the incoming postmasters, who were appointed prior to the time when the law went into effect, took advantage of the delay to make clean sweeps of their offices. In one of these offices, where the men were changed in a body, the new appointees hired the men whom they replaced, at $35 a month apiece, to teach them their duties; in itself a sufficient comment on the folly of the spoils system.
Mr. Bynum’s bill provided for the reinstatement of the Democrats who were turned out by the Republicans just before the classification of the railway mail service. Of course such a bill was a mere partisan measure. There was no more reason for reinstating the Democrats thus turned out than for reinstating the Republicans who had been previously turned out that these same Democrats might get in, or for reinstating the Republicans in the free-delivery offices who had been turned out just before these offices were classified. If the bill had been enacted into law it would have been a most serious blow to the whole system, for it would have put a premium upon legislation of the kind; and after every change of parties we should have seen the passing of laws to reinstate masses of Republicans or Democrats, as the case might be. This would have meant a return to the old system under a new form of procedure. Nevertheless, Mr. Bynum’s bill received the solid support of his party. Not a Democratic vote was cast against it in the House, none even of the MassachusettsDemocrats being recorded against it. In the Senate it was pushed by Mr. Vilas. By a piece of rather sharp parliamentary procedure he nearly got it through by unanimous consent. That it failed was owing entirely to the vigilance of Senator Lodge. Senator Vilas asked for the passage of the bill, on the ground that it was one of small importance, upon which his committee were agreed. When it was read the words “classified civil service” caught Senator Lodge’s ear, and he insisted upon an explanation. On finding out what the bill was he at once objected to its consideration. Under this objection it could not then be considered. If it could have been brought to a vote it would undoubtedly have passed; but it was late in the session, the calendars were crowded with bills, and it was impossible to get it up in its regular order. Another effort was made, and was again frustrated by Senator Lodge, and the bill then died a natural death.
In the final session of the 53d Congress a little incident occurred which deserves to be related in full, not for its own importance, but because it affords an excellent example of the numerous cases which test the real efficiency of the friends of the reform in Congress. It emphasizes the need of having, to watch over the interests of the law, a man who is willing to fight, who knows the time to fight, and who knows how to fight. The secretary of the Commission was, in the original law of 1883, allowed a salary of $1600 a year. As the Commission’s force and work have grown, the salary insuccessive appropriation bills for the last ten years has been provided for at the rate of $2000 a year. Many of the clerks under the secretary now receive $1800, so that it would be of course an absurdity to reduce him in salary below his subordinates. Scores of other officials of the Government, including, for instance, the President’s private secretary, the First Assistant Postmaster-General, the First Assistant Secretary of State, etc., have had their salaries increased in successive appropriation bills over the sum originally provided, in precisely the same way that the salary of the secretary of the Commission was increased. The 53d Congress was Democratic, as was the President, Mr. Cleveland, and the secretary of the Commission was himself a Democrat, who had been appointed to the position by Mr. Cleveland during his first term as President. The rules of the House provide that there shall be no increase of salary beyond that provided in existing law in any appropriation bill. When the appropriation for the Civil Service Commission came up in the House, Mr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, made the point of order that to give $2000 to the secretary of the Commission was to increase his salary by $400 over that provided in the original law of 1883, and was therefore out of order. He also produced a list of twenty or thirty other officers, including the President’s private secretary, the First Assistant Postmaster-General, etc., whose salaries were similarly increased. He withdrew his point of order as regards these persons, but adhered to it as regardsthe secretary of the Commission. The chairman of the Committee of the Whole, Mr. O’Neill, of Massachusetts, sustained the point of order; and not one person made any objection or made any fight, and the bill was put through the House with the secretary’s salary reduced.
Now, the point of order was probably ill taken anyhow. The existing law was and had been for ten years that the salary was $2000. But, in any event, had there been a single Congressman alert to the situation and willing to make a fight he could have stopped the whole movement by at once making a similar point of order against the President’s private secretary, against the First Assistant Postmaster-General, the Assistant Secretary of State, and all the others involved. The House would of course have refused to cut down the salaries of all of these officials, and a resolute man, willing to insist that they should all go or none, could have saved the salary of the secretary of the Civil Service Commission. There were plenty of men who would have done this if it had been pointed out to them; but no one did so, and Mr. Breckinridge’s point of order was sustained, and the salary of the secretary reduced by $400. When it got over to the Senate, however, the Civil Service reformers had allies who needed but little coaching. In the first place, the sub-committee of the Committee on Appropriations, composed of Messrs. Teller, Cockrell, and Allison, to which the Civil Service Commission section of the Appropriation bill was referred, restored the salary to$2000; but Senator Gorman succeeded in carrying, by a bare majority, the Appropriations Committee against it, and it was reported to the full Senate still at $1600. The minute it got into the full Senate, however, Senator Lodge had a fair chance at it, and it was known that he would receive ample support. All that he had to do was to show clearly the absolute folly of the provision thus put in by Mr. Breckinridge, and kept in by Mr. Gorman, and to make it evident that he intended to fight it resolutely. The opposition collapsed at once; the salary was put back at $2000, and the bill became a law in that form.
Whether bad legislation shall be choked and good legislation forwarded depends largely upon the composition of the committees on Civil Service reform of the Senate and the Lower House. The make-up of these committees is consequently of great importance. They are charged with the duty of investigating complaints against the Commission, and it is of course very important that if ever the Commission becomes corrupt or inefficient its shortcomings should be unsparingly exposed in Congress. On the other hand, it is equally important that the falsity of untruthful charges advanced against it should be made public. In the 51st, 52d, and 53d Congresses a good deal of work was done by the Civil Service Committee of the House, and none at all by the corresponding committee of the Senate. The three chairmen of the House committee were Mr. Lehlbach, Mr. Andrew, and Mr. De Forest. All three were able and conscientiousmen and stanch supporters of the law. The chairman in the 52d Congress, Mr. John F. Andrew, was throughout his whole term of service one of the ablest, most fearless, and most effective champions of the cause of the reform in the House. Among the other members of the committee, in different Congresses, who stood up valiantly for the reform, were Mr. Hopkins, of Illinois, Mr. Butterworth, of Ohio, Mr. Boatner, of Louisiana, and Mr. Dargan and Mr. Brawley, of South Carolina. Occasionally there have been on the committee members who were hostile to the reform, such as Mr. Alderson, of West Virginia; but these have not been men carrying weight in the House. The men of intelligence and ability who once familiarize themselves with the workings of the system, as they are bound to do if they are on the committee, are sure to become its supporters. In both the 51st and the 52d Congresses charges were made against the Commission, and investigations were held into its actions and into the workings of the law by the House committee. In each case, in its report the committee not only heartily applauded the conduct of the Commission, but no less heartily approved the workings of the law, and submitted bills to increase the power of the Commission and to render the law still more wide-reaching and drastic. These bills, unfortunately, were never acted on in the House.
The main fight in each session comes on the Appropriation bill. There is not the slightest danger that the law will be repealed, and there is not muchdanger that any President will suffer it to be so laxly administered as to deprive it of all value; though there is always need to keep a vigilant lookout for fear of such lax administration. The danger-point is in the appropriations. The first Civil Service Commission, established in the days of President Grant, was starved out by Congress refusing to appropriate for it. A hostile Congress could repeat the same course now; and, as a matter of fact, in every Congress resolute efforts are made by the champions of foul government and dishonest politics to cut off the Commission’s supplies. The bolder men, who come from districts where little is known of the law, and where there is no adequate expression of intelligent and honest opinion on the subject, attack it openly. They are always joined by a number who make the attack covertly under some point of order, or because of a nominal desire for economy. These are quite as dangerous as the others, and deserve exposure. Every man interested in decent government should keep an eye on his Congressman and see how he votes on the question of appropriations for the Commission.
The opposition to the reform is generally well led by skilled parliamentarians, and they fight with the vindictiveness natural to men who see a chance of striking at the institution which has baffled their ferocious greed. As a rule, the rank and file are composed of politicians who could not rise in public life because of their attitude on any public question, and who derive most of their power fromthe skill with which they manipulate the patronage of their districts. These men have a gift at office-mongering, just as other men have a peculiar knack in picking pockets; and they are joined by all the honest dull men, who vote wrong out of pure ignorance, and by a very few sincere and intelligent, but wholly misguided people. Many of the spoils leaders are both efficient and fearless, and able to strike hard blows. In consequence, the leaders on the side of decency must themselves be men of ability and force, or the cause will suffer. For our good fortune, we have never yet lacked such leaders.
The Appropriation committees, both in the House and Senate, almost invariably show a friendly disposition toward the law. They are composed of men of prominence, who have a sense of the responsibilities of their positions and an earnest desire to do well for the country and to make an honorable record for their party in matters of legislation. They are usually above resorting to the arts of low cunning or of sheer demagogy to which the foes of the reform system are inevitably driven, and in consequence they can be relied upon to give, if not what is needed, at least enough to prevent any retrogression. It is in the open House and in Committee of the Whole that the fight is waged. The most dangerous fight occurs in Committee of the Whole, for there the members do not vote by aye and no, and in consequence a mean politician who wishes ill to the law, but is afraid of his constituents, votes against it in committee, but does not dare to do so when the ayesand noes are called in the House. One result of this has been that more than once the whole appropriation has been stricken out in Committee of the Whole, and then voted back again by substantial majorities by the same men sitting in open House.
In the debate on the appropriation the whole question of the workings of the law is usually discussed, and those members who are opposed to it attack not only the law itself, but the Commission which administers it. The occasion is, therefore, invariably seized as an opportunity for a pitched battle between the friends and foes of the system, the former trying to secure such an increase of appropriation as will permit the Commission to extend its work, and the latter striving to abolish the law outright by refusing all appropriations. In the 51st and 52d Congresses, Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts, led the fight for the reform in the Lower House. He was supported by such party leaders as Messrs. Reed, of Maine, and McKinley, of Ohio, among the Republicans, and Messrs. Wilson, of West Virginia, and Sayers, of Texas, among the Democrats. Among the other champions of the law on the floor of the House were Messrs. Hopkins and Butterworth, Mr. Greenhalge, of Massachusetts, Mr. Henderson, of Iowa, Messrs. Payne, Tracey, and Coombs, of New York. I wish I had the space to chronicle the names of all, and to give a complete list of those who voted for the law. Among the chief opponents of it were Messrs. Spinola, of New York, Enloe, of Tennessee, Stockdale, of Mississippi, Grosvenor, of Ohio, andBowers, of California. The task of the defenders of the law was, in one way easy, for they had no arguments to meet, the speeches of their adversaries being invariably divisible into mere declamation and direct misstatement of facts. In the Senate, Senators Hoar, of Massachusetts, Allison, of Iowa, Hawley, of Connecticut, Wolcott, of Colorado, Perkins, of California, Cockrell, of Missouri, and Butler, of South Carolina, always supported the Commission against unjust attack. Senator Gorman was naturally the chief leader of the assaults upon the Commission. Senators Harris, Plumb, Stewart, and Ingalls were among his allies.
In each session the net result of the fight was an increase in the appropriation for the Commission. The most important increase was that obtained in the first session of the 53d Congress. On this occasion Mr. Lodge was no longer in the House, having been elected to the Senate. The work of the Commission had grown so that it was impossible to perform it without a great increase of force; and it would have been impossible to have put into effect the extensions of the classified service had this increase not been allowed. In the House the Committee on Appropriations, of which Mr. Sayers was chairman, allowed the increase, but it was stricken out in the House itself after an acrimonious debate, in which the cause of the law was sustained by Messrs. Henderson and Hopkins, Mr. McCall, of Massachusetts, Mr. Coombs, Mr. Crain, of Texas, Mr. Storer, of Ohio, and many others, while the spoils-mongers were led by Messrs. Stockdaleand Williams, of Mississippi, Pendelton, of West Virginia, Fithian, of Illinois, and others less important.
When the bill went over to the Senate, however, Mr. Lodge, well supported by Messrs. Allison, Cockrell, Wolcott, and Teller, had the provision for the increase of appropriation for the Commission restored and increased, thereby adding by one half to the efficiency of the Commission’s work. Had it not been for this the Commission would have been quite unable to have undertaken the extensions recently ordered by President Cleveland.
It is noteworthy that the men who have done most effective work for the law in Washington in the departments, and more especially in the House and Senate, are men of spotless character, who show by their whole course in public life that they are not only able and resolute, but also devoted to a high ideal. Much of what they have done has received little comment in public, because much of the work in committee, and some of the work in the House, such as making or combating points of order, and pointing out the danger or merit of certain bills, is not of a kind readily understood or appreciated by an outsider; yet no men have deserved better of the country, for there is in American public life no one other cause so fruitful of harm to the body-politic as the spoils system, and the legislators and administrative officers who have done the best work toward its destruction merit a peculiar meed of praise from all well-wishers of the Republic.
I have spoken above of the good that would come from a thorough and intelligent knowledge as to who were the friends and who were the foes of the law in Washington. Departmental officers, the heads of bureaus, and, above all, the Commissioners themselves, should be carefully watched by all friends of the reform. They should be supported when they do well, and condemned when they do ill; and attention should be called not only to what they do, but to what they fail to do. To an even greater extent, of course, this applies to the President. As regards the Senators and Congressmen also there is urgent need of careful supervision by the friends of the law. We need criticism by those who are unable to do their part in action; but the criticism, to be useful, must be both honest and intelligent, and the critics must remember that the system has its stanch friends and bitter foes among both party men and men of no party—among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Each Congressman should be made to feel that it is his duty to support the law, and that he will be held to account if he fails to support it. Especially is it necessary to concentrate effort in working for each step of reform. In legislative matters, for instance, there is need of increase of appropriations for the Commission, and there is a chance of putting through the bill to reform the Consular service. This has received substantial backing in the Senate, and has the support of the majority of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Instead of wasting efforts by a diffuse support of eight or ten bills, itwould be well to bend every energy to securing the passage of the Consular bill; and to do this it is necessary to arouse not only the Civil Service Reform Associations, but the Boards of Trade throughout the country, and to make the Congressmen and Senators feel individually the pressure from those of their constituents who are resolved no longer to tolerate the peculiarly gross manifestation of the spoils system which now obtains in the consular service, with its attendant discredit to the national honor abroad.
People sometimes grow a little down-hearted about the reform. When they feel in this mood it would be well for them to reflect on what has actually been gained in the past six years. By the inclusion of the railway mail service, the smaller free-delivery offices, the Indian School service, the Internal Revenue service, and other less important branches, the extent of the public service which is under the protection of the law has been more than doubled, and there are now nearly fifty thousand employees of the Federal Government who have been withdrawn from the degrading influences that rule under the spoils system. This of itself is a great success and a great advance, though, of course, it ought only to spur us on to renewed effort. In the fall of 1894 the people of the State of New York, by a popular vote, put into their constitution a provision providing for a merit system in the affairs of the State and its municipalities; and the following spring the great city of Chicago voted, by an overwhelming majority,in favor of applying in its municipal affairs the advanced and radical Civil Service Reform Law, which had already passed the Illinois Legislature. Undoubtedly, after every success there comes a moment of reaction. The friends of the reform grow temporarily lukewarm, or, because it fails to secure everything they hoped, they neglect to lay proper stress upon all that it does secure. Yet, in spite of all rebuffs, in spite of all disappointments and opposition, the growth of the principle of Civil Service reform has been continually more rapid, and every year has taken us measurably nearer that ideal of pure and decent government which is dear to the heart of every honest American citizen.
FOOTNOTES:[13]Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1895.
[13]Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1895.