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

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

I believed then, and I believe now, that the existing system which, for want of a better name, I call the “spoils system,” must be killed or it will kill the Republic. I believe that it is impossible to maintain free institutions in the country upon any basis of that sort. I am no prophet of evil, I am not a pessimist in any sense of the word, but I do believe that if the present system goes on until 50,000,000 people shall have grown into 100,000,000, and 140,000 officers shall have grown into 300,000, with their compensation in proportion, and all shall depend upon the accession of one party or the other to the Presidency and to the executive functions, the Presidency of the country, if it shall last in name so long, will be put up for sale to the highest bidder even as in Rome the imperial crown was put to those who could raise the largest fund.

I beg gentlemen to believe that whatever I may have said as to the relations of parties I do not approach the question of the reform of the civil service in any mere partisan spirit. It was because I thought I saw this danger, because I believed that it was imminent, because I believed then as I do now that it is destructive of republicanism and will end in the downfall of republican government, that I felt it my duty to devote whatever ability I had to the consideration of this subject. It was that which induced me a year or two ago to introduce a bill which after the best reflection, the best study, the best assistance that I could get I did introduce in the Senate, and which in some degree modified, has come back from the Committee on Civil Service Reform, and is now pending before this body.

The purpose of this bill is merely to secure the application of the Jeffersonian tests, fidelity, honesty, capacity. The methods are those which are known and familiar to us all in the various avocations of life—competition, comparison. Perhaps the bill is imperfect. If so, I am sure I express the wish of every member of the committee that it may be improved. There is no pride of opinion, there is no determination, if suggestions of value are made not promptly to adopt them. There is no disposition to do aught except to perfect, and in the best possible way, this bill, the sole object of which is to improve this great department of our Government.

Mr. President, it is because I believe the “spoils system” to be a great crime, because I believe it to be fraught with danger, because I believe that the highest duty of patriotism is to prevent the crime and to avoid the danger, that I advocate this or a better bill if it can be found for the improvement of the civil service.

I shall say in passing that I find it no objection to this bill at all that while I believe it is of great value to the country in all its aspects, I do not believe it will bring disaster to the Democratic party. There has been great misapprehension as to the methods and the scope of the bill. I desire the attention of the Senators while I briefly state them. I see I have spoken a good deal longer than I intended. The bill simply applies to the Executive Departments of the Government here in Washington and to those offices throughout the country, post-offices and custom-houses, which employ more than fifty persons. I am told, and I am sure that I am not far out of the way, if I am not exactly accurate, that the number of such offices does not exceed thirty or perhaps thirty-five, and that the number of persons who are employed in them, together with those in the Departments here, will not exceed 10,000.

I said that this was a tentative effort; that it was intended to be an experiment, and it is because it is tentative, because it is intended to be an experiment, that the committee thought it advisable in its initial stages to limit it, as they have limited it, in the bill. The bill does not apply to elective officers, of course, nor to officers appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, nor to the military, nor to the naval, nor to the judicial establishment. It applies simply now to those officials who are employed in the Departments here and in the large offices of the Government elsewhere, first, because as an experiment it was thought that it gave scope enough to test its value and labor enough to employ all those who are engaged in putting it in operation until its merits shall be fairly tried and it shall commend itself either to the approval or condemnation of the American people.

There was another reason. The heads of offices and bureaus, where the number of employès is small, can themselves personally judge of the fitness of persons who are applicants for appointment, knowing as they do more or less in their narrow communities their antecedents, their habits, and their modes of life.

The bill does not touch the question of tenure of office or of removal from office. I see it stated by those who do not know that it provides for a seven years’ tenure of office. There is nothing like it in the bill. I see it stated that it provides against removals from office. There is nothing like it in the bill. Whether or not it would be advisable to fix the tenure of office, whether or not it would be advisable to limit removals are questions about which men will differ; but the bill as it is and as we invoke the judgment of the Senate upon it contains no provisions either as to tenure of office or removals from office. It leaves those questions exactly where the law now finds them. It concerns itself only with admission to the public service; it concerns itself only with discovering in certain proper ways or in certain ways—gentlemen may differ as to whether they are proper or not—the fitness of the persons who shall be appointed. It takes cognizance of the fact that it is impossible for the head of a Department or a large office personally to know all the applicants, and therefore it provides a method by which, when a vacancy occurs by death, by resignation, by the unlimited power of removal, a suitable person may be designated to fill the vacancy. It says in effect that when a vacancy occurs in the civil service everybody who desires entrance shall have the right to apply. Everybody, humble, poor, without patronage, without influence, whatever may be his condition in life, shall have the right to go before the parties charged with an examination of his fitness and there be subjected to the test of open, regulated, fair, impartial examination.

Mr. Maxey. If it is agreeable I should like to interrupt the Senator to ask a question upon that point. In the plan suggested for examination as to fitness is it to be a competitive examination by the bill? I ask the Senator if the committee has fallen upon any plan as to the line of inquiry that should be instituted in that examination, and if so will he indicate it? That I think is an important consideration.

Mr. Pendleton. I am glad that the Senator has asked that question, for it gives me an opportunity of saying to him and to the Senate that if they will examine the report made by the committee, they will find that this system is not entirely new, but that to a very large extent in certain offices in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Boston it has been put into practical operation under the heads of the offices there, and that they have devised, with the assistance of the commission originally appointed by General Grant, but largely upon their own motion, a system which I suppose would, to some extent, be followed under this bill.