On the bill (S. 133) to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States.
Mr. Pendleton said:
Mr. President: When I assented yesterday that this bill should be informally laid aside without losing its place, I had no set speech to deliver, nor had I the intention of preparing a speech for to-day. I did not intend to hold up the bill here as an obstruction to any business before the Senate, or as an aid in passing any measure that might receive my approbation, as my good Friend, the Senator from Kansas [Mr. Plumb], so politely intimated. The bill providing for a bankrupt law was very speedily, and to me unexpectedly, disposed of yesterday, and this bill was called up several hours earlier than I supposed it would be, and I thought the convenience of the Senate as well as of myself would be subserved if I had an opportunity to condense what I had to say on the subject.
The necessity of a change in the civil administration of this government has been so fully discussed in the periodicals and pamphlets and newspapers, and before the people, that I feel indisposed to make any further argument. This subject, in all its ramifications, was submitted to the people of the United States at the fall elections, and they have spoken in no low or uncertain tone.
I do not doubt that the local questions exerted great influence in many States upon the result; but it is my conviction, founded on the observation of an active participation in the canvass in Ohio, that dissatisfaction with the methods of administration adopted by the Republican party in the past few years was the most important single factor in reaching the conclusion that was attained. I do not say that the civil service of the Government is wholly bad. I can not honestly do so. I do not say that the men who are employed in it are all corrupt or inefficient or unworthy. That would do a very great injustice to a great number of faithful, honest, and intelligent public servants. But I do say that the civil service is inefficient; that it is expensive; that it is extravagant; that it is in many cases and in some senses corrupt; that it has welded the whole body of its employès into a great political machine; that it has converted them into an army of officers and men, veterans in political warfare, disciplined and trained, whose salaries, whose time, whose exertions at least twice within a very short period in the history of our country have robbed the people of the fair results of Presidential elections.
I repeat, Mr. President, that the civil service is inefficient, expensive, and extravagant and that it is in many instances corrupt. Is it necessary for me to prove facts which are so patent that even the blind must see and the deaf must hear?
At the last session of Congress, in open Senate, it was stated and proven that in the Treasury Department at Washington there were 3,400 employès, and that of this number the employment of less than 1,600 was authorized by law and appropriations made for their payment, and that more than 1,700 were put on or off the rolls of the Department at the will and pleasure of the Secretary of the Treasury, and paid not out of appropriations made for that purpose but out of various funds and balances of appropriation lapsed in the Treasury in one shape or another, which are not by law appropriated to the payment of these employès. I was amazed. I had never before heard that such a state of affairs existed. I did not believe that it was possible until my honorable colleague rose in his place and admitted the general truth of the statement and defended the system as being necessary for the proper administration of the Treasury Department.
Mr. President, we see in this statement whence comes that immense body of public officials, inspectors, detectives, deputies, examiners, from the Treasury Department who have for years past been sent over the States for the purpose of managing Presidential conventions and securing Presidential elections at the public expense.
I hold in my hand a statement made before the committee which reported this bill, showing that in one of the divisions of the Treasury Department at Washington where more than nine hundred persons were employed, men and women, five hundred and more of them were entirely useless, and were discharged without in any degree affecting the efficiency of the bureau. I read from the testimony taken before the committee. Every gentleman can find it if he has not it already on his table. The statement to which I refer I read from page 121 of report of committee No. 576:
The extravagance of the present system was well shown in the examination of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing by a committee of which I was chairman. Of a force of nine hundred and fifty-eight persons five hundred and thirty-nine, with annual salaries amounting to $390,000, were found to be superfluous and were discharged. The committee reported that for years the force in some branches had been twice and even three times as great as the work required. In one division—