“Does it require argument to prove to thoughtful people that wise choice is not likely to be made in the midst of the revel of hysteria, sham, demagogy, falsehood and ignorance, which we call a direct popular election of administrative officers? Is choice likely to be wise when nine out of ten of those who make it know nothing of the candidates they support or oppose, and are equally ignorant of the work the candidates ask the privilege of doing?”
Thus arises a question difficult to decide, between appointments by a machine, and those of a machine-directed populace.
The immense importance of scientific management of cities is so obvious as not to need discussion. It is set forth in detail in a book published in 1918 by M. L. Cooke, Director of Public Works in Philadelphia, to which the reader is referred. The author states that “Governmental work, Federal, State and Municipal, is still almost exclusively in the unsystematized stage.”
Here is an extract from a competent writer, a man of actual experience in city matters:
“When the Public Builds Buildings. Twenty-seven million dollars for a City Hall that was to have cost $7,000,000; no water on the second floor of a public bath because the water mains were made too small; an emergency order, without competitive bids, for repairing a police precinct, given to a contractor sixteen miles away; $20,000 for cleaning a City Hall that could be kept clean for $2,000; fifteen employees dead from tuberculosis in one germ-infested, dark, unclean room. What’s the use of multiplying examples?” (Woman’s Part in Government, by W. H. p. 330.)
The lack of efficiency in Federal administration which has been notorious for ninety years is due to the malign influence of manhood suffrage which renders it impossible to enforce standards of capacity. What Faguet calls “the religion of incompetency” is displayed even in the presidential appointments where men are moved about from office to office like checkers on a board, and put in places for which they have had no previous training whatever. This method of appointment is in itself convincing proof, not merely of the unfitness of the appointments, but of the vice of the whole system of selection. A jack of all trades is master of none. What would be said of the fitness of a man to superintend a watch-making establishment who had never worked at the trade or business of maker or of dealer in watches, and whose entire experience had consisted of one or two years in each of the employments of carpenter, dentist, cook and piano tuner? Yet the practice of politics sanctions just such appointments as that would be. Even for great offices requiring the highest skill, preparatory training or experience is rarely required. Looking back from 1918; out of forty-four United States Secretaries of State from the beginning of our history, thirty-three were lawyers; only three or four had any previous diplomatic experience; out of the sixteen last Secretaries of the Treasury, twelve were lawyers and only four bankers; out of the last thirteen Postmasters General, only one had ever before been in the Post Office Department; of forty-nine Secretaries of War in our history thirty-five were lawyers; the others were editors, bankers, etc., and only three or four had any previous military experience; out of thirty-eight Secretaries of the Navy twenty-seven were lawyers, three authors, and seven were business men. Not one of them all had any naval experience prior to taking control of the United States Navy. A former Secretary of the Navy gave the writer to understand that he had been appointed principally to distribute the patronage and to hold the state politically in line. Now, while it is quite true that a knowledge of the law and a training in the art of reading and understanding law is extremely important to any cabinet official, yet surely a lawyer cannot be expected to build ships, conduct a post-office business, direct the diplomacy of a great nation or carry on war properly without any appropriate previous training whatever. Yet under a system of government by manhood or universal suffrage untrained men are sure to get these high appointments because they are vote-getters and can obtain the support of the controllable class for the party in power; in short because they are machine men and the needs of the machine are first and imperative.
The extent to which some of these cabinet officers have been shifted about is astonishing. Mr. Cortelyou for instance had been stenographer and private secretary to President McKinley; and in a few years thereafter filled the offices of Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Meyer was Postmaster General under Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy under Taft, the next President. Moody from the place of Secretary of the Navy under Roosevelt was suddenly jumped onto the bench and made Justice of the Supreme Court. Charles Bonaparte was Attorney General when he was shifted into the place of Secretary of the Navy. Now it is a sufficient tax on human credulity to ask one to believe that the original appointments of these men were made entirely because of fitness; but it exceeds the limit when we are required to suppose that while in the office of Postmaster General Mr. Cortelyou was really learning finance and becoming fitted for Secretary of the Treasury, while Mr. Meyer in the same Postmaster General’s office was becoming a great naval expert, a real seadog justified to be “Ruler of Uncle Sam’s Navee.”
It is notorious that all state appointments by the governor are made not for merit, but as a reward for political service, and invariably from the members of the political oligarchy who procured the governor’s election, or under their direction to members of their family or backers. The results are often grotesque. Look for a moment at a batch of state appointments; take the very first that happens to come to hand from New York. State Tax Commissioner W. was formerly State Comptroller and before that Postmaster. Election Superintendent R., formerly Assistant District Attorney in New York City, was before that in the Attorney General’s office in Albany and Superintendent of State Prisons. R. 2 was recently Collector of the Port of Rochester; he now holds a state office. Another couple:—V. has been successively Commissioner of Excise, Commissioner of Police, Commissioner of Docks, Police Justice, Commissioner of Elections; Superintendent of Public Buildings; Superintendent of Elections. H. has held the offices of Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue; member of Board of Alderman; Grain Superintendent; Sealer of Weights and Measures; Superintendent of Streets and Clerk of the Court. The practice is the same in all states and cities, and these five instances could be easily increased to five thousand and with time and research to five hundred thousand. In fact it is rare to find a man of over thirty-five years of age in public office who has not filled several entirely different political employments. It is said that one of the members of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846 proposed that public officials should be selected by lot; and it is doubtful whether in some cases the result would not be an improvement on the present system. Is it any wonder that government administration is a joke, an object of scorn to business men? Efficiency cannot be expected in any department of government or business whose chief is ignorant of the details of its operations. And yet so demoralizing has been the effect of the manhood suffrage political tradition, so accustomed are not merely the politicians but the public to the vicious practice of distributing these most important offices as rewards for political work, that the proposal to require them to be filled by men of experience and training in the work of their respective offices would probably be met with derisive laughter in every governmental department.
Let us not flatter ourselves, therefore, that under a manhood suffrage government any real improvement can be obtained by the mere expedient so often urged of filling the offices by appointment instead of by election. Experience teaches the contrary. At present the appointments to office, whether made by the president, governor or other officer are of the same general character as those made by popular election; that is, they are nearly all bad; the spirit of Jackson still controls most of them; the spirit of politics, of deference to the will of the machine, of compliance with the theory on which universal suffrage stands; the theory that participation in the activities, honors and emoluments of government is a sort of perquisite of citizenship or privilege in which each citizen is entitled to share. This pernicious theory must be forever cast out of our political system and replaced by the true one; namely, that both the vote and office are to be entrusted only to the qualified, before we can expect permanent improvement in the administration of public affairs. In vain we may continue the long struggle to abolish the spoils system as long as every candidate from the president down to constable has to face the demands of the insatiable regular army of the politicians. Not only every legislative candidate, but every aspirant for a judicial or administrative office, has now in one way or another to satisfy these disciplined gangs of political marauders, their bosses and their machines. These hireling bands must be disfranchised and disbanded and the institution of manhood suffrage overthrown before efficiency will become an established feature of our governmental system.
Of the fact that a pure and efficient administration of public affairs is possible there cannot be the slightest doubt. The result was actually achieved in this country in federal administration by President Washington, and continued in the forty years that intervened till Jackson’s time. It has also been accomplished by ourselves in the Philippines, by the French and Dutch in some of their colonies, and notably by Great Britain in all parts of the world. Read for instance the report from which the following is an extract, made by Alleyne Ireland, a specialist in Colonial affairs, appointed Colonial Commissioner in the Far East, by the University of Chicago. (North American Review, May, 1918.)