American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

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 too long 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 gave the 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 be fearless 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 to their 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 under President 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 to enter 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 friends of 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.