American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

I beg that my colleagues on this side of the Chamber may remember, I desire that our party associates throughout the country shall remember, that the people will continue to us their confidence and increase it, that they will continue to us power and increase it, just in the proportion that we honestly and fairly and promptly answer to the demands which the people have made, and which were thus responded to by the Republican party. They asked revenue reform and they received none. They asked civil-service reform and they obtained none. They asked that the civil service of this Government should not either as to its men or its expenditures be made the basis upon which political contests were to be carried on, and they received for answer that that was an old fashion and a good method of political warfare.

I beg gentlemen upon this side of the Chamber to remember that if they desire to escape the fate which now seems to be impending over their adversaries they must avoid the example which those adversaries have set them.

Mr. President the bill which I have the honor to advocate to-day, and which is reported by a committee of the Senate, is the commencement, in my humble judgment, of an attempt to answer one of the demands which the people have authoritatively made. I speak advisedly. It is the commencement of an attempt to organize a system which shall respond to one of the demands which the people have made.

I suppose the most enthusiastic supporter of this bill will not pretend that it is perfect. I suppose he will not pretend that upon the adoption of this bill a system will immediately spring into life which will perfect and purify the civil service of the Government. But it is the commencement of an attempt to lay the foundations of a system which, if it shall answer in any reasonable degree the expectation of those who by experience and faithful study have framed it, it will in the end correct the abuses to which I have alluded, and which have been delineated by no enemy of the Republican party or of the Administration in the report which I have read to the Senate.

The bill has for its foundation the simple and single idea that the offices of the Government are trusts for the people; that the performance of the duties of those offices is to be in the interests of the people; that there is no excuse for the being of one office or the paying of one salary except that it is in the highest practicable degree necessary for the welfare of the people; that every superfluous office-holder should be cut off; that every incompetent office-holder should be dismissed; that the employment of two where one will suffice is robbery; that salaries so large that they can submit to the extortion, the forced payment of 2 or 10 per cent. are excessive and ought to be diminished. I am not speaking of purely voluntary contributions.

If it be true that offices are trusts for the people, then it is also true that the offices should be filled by those who can perform and discharge the duties in the best possible way. Fidelity, capacity, honesty, were the tests established by Mr. Jefferson when he assumed the reins of government in 1801. He said then, and said truly, that these elements in the public offices of the Government were necessary to an honest civil service, and that an honest civil service was essential to the purity and efficiency of administration, necessary to the preservation of republican institutions.

Mr. Jefferson was right. The experience of eighty years has shown it. The man best fitted should be the man placed in office, especially if the appointment is made by the servants of the people. It is as true as truth can be that fidelity, capacity, honesty, are essential elements of fitness, and that the man who is most capable and most faithful and most honest is the man who is the most fit, and he should be appointed to office.

These are truths that in their statement will be denied by none, and yet the best means of ascertaining that fitness has been a vexed question with every Administration of this Government and with every man who has been charged with the responsibility of its execution. We know what is the result. Pass examinations have been tried; professions have been tried; honest endeavors have been tried; a disposition to live faithfully up to these requirements has been tried; and yet we know and the experience of to-day shows it, that they have all made a most lamentable failure. We do now know that so great has been the increase of the powers of this Government and the number of officers under it that no President, no Cabinet, no heads of bureaus, can by possibility know the fitness of all applicants for the subordinate offices of the Government. The result has been, and under the existing system it must always be, that the President and his Cabinet and those who are charged with the responsibility have remitted the question of fitness to their own partisan friends, and those partisan friends have in their turn decided the question of fitness in favor of their partisan friends. The Administration has need of the support of members of Congress in carrying on its work. It therefore remits to members of Congress of its own party the questions of appointment to office in the various districts. These gentlemen, in the course of their political life, naturally (I do not find fault with them for it) find themselves under strain and pressure to secure a nomination or a re-nomination or election, and they use the places to reward those whose friends and families and connections and aids and deputies will serve their purpose.

I put it to gentlemen, particularly to my friends on this side of the Chamber, because you have not the opportunity to exercise this patronage as much as our friends on the other side, whether or not the element of fitness enters largely into the questions of appointment in your respective districts and States. It can not be. The necessities of the case prevent it. The pressure upon men who want to be elected prevents it. The demands that are made by partisan friends and those who have been influential and potent in securing personal triumph to gentlemen who may happen to be in such relation to the appointing power that they have the influence to secure appointment prevent it. The result is as I have stated, that instead of making fitness, capacity, honesty, fidelity the only or the essential qualifications for office, personal fidelity and partisan activity alone control.

When I came to the Senate I had occasion more than ever before to make some investigation upon the subject, and found to my surprise the extent to which the demoralization of the service had gone. I saw the civil service debauched and demoralized. I saw offices distributed to incompetent and unworthy men as a reward for the lowest of dirty partisan work. I saw many men employed to do the work of one man. I saw the money of the people shamefully wasted to keep up electioneering funds by political assessments on salaries. I saw the whole body of the public officers paid by the people organized into a compact, disciplined corps of electioneerers obeying a master as if they were eating the bread of his dependence and rendering him personal service. I saw these evils were fostered, encouraged, stimulated very largely by Senators and Representatives. They had their friends who lent them a helping hand; and regardless of the fitness of these friends, of the necessity of their employment, they insisted on the appointment and had the power, which on consideration, was found sufficient to secure it.