Ethics in Service

by William H. Taft

Then often Congress relies upon the discretion of the President to accomplish such tremendous things as in the Panama Canal. It directed the President to build the Canal. It remained for him to appoint all the persons engaged in the work, and he became responsible for every one of them. Another notable instance of the reliance of Congress upon the President occurred in the Spanish War, when it appropriated $50,000,000 to be allotted at his discretion.

Yet it seems to me that a curtailment of the small duties now imposed on the President might well be made. The number of his appointments, for instance, might well be lessened. The President ought, of course, to appoint his Cabinet, the Supreme Court, ambassadors, ministers, generals and admirals, but beyond that I think appointments ought to be made without bothering the President about them. We have introduced a Civil Service reform system with a Civil Service Commission, and I trust that the matter of taking these subordinate officers out of politics will be pressed generally as a much-needed reform.

Is the position occupied by a postmaster of sufficient importance to justify the President in bothering with his appointment when he has such a problem as the Mexican situation on his hands? We are coming to the time when there are great complicated duties to perform under the government. We have departed from the Jefferson view, and we now think that the government can do a great many things helpfully, provided it has experts to do them. Is it not entitled to the best men to do these things? Yet how are experts obtainable unless they are selected to permanent positions by those who are looking for experts and not looking for men who exercise influence at the polls?

I recommended to Congress four times, that is, in each annual message, that it enable me to put these men under the Civil Service law and in the classified service; but it did not do it, and why? Because all local officers now have to be confirmed by the Senate. That power of confirmation gives a hold on the Executive and each Senator and each Congressman wants to name the postmaster and the other local officers in his district or state. The consequence is that Congressmen do not wish the Senate to lose the power of confirmation. They believe this personal patronage to be a means of perpetuating their own tenure. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. Few men help themselves politically in the long run through the use of patronage. It is a boomerang. Some few manage to make it useful, but generally when a man secures an appointment for a henchman, as the saying is in Washington—and it is a very true one—he makes one ingrate and twenty enemies. The result is that after he has served a term or two, he begins to find those aspiring constituents, whom he did not appoint, rising like snakeheads to strike him down.

Therefore, if Congressmen really had wisdom and looked ahead, they would rid themselves of responsibility for these appointments, would abolish the necessity for confirmation by the Senate, and would thus enable the President to classify them under the Civil Service law and merit system. But we have made progress and I am not discouraged about it. Ultimately we shall get the Senate to consent to give up that power, though at present the Democratic majority in the two Houses is fierce against such a suggestion, and quite naturally so, for, while the Republican party has been in control for sixteen years, the trend into office has been Republican and the Democrats wish to change it. That is human nature, and I am merely regretting, not condemning it. Perhaps if the Republicans come back into power after four years, they will not be quite so hungry as the Democrats were after sixteen years of famine, and we may have a little less wolfish desire to get at the offices.

The time taken up in the consideration of minor appointments by executive officers, the President and Cabinet officers especially, is a great waste and no one can know the nervous vitality that can be expended upon them until he has had actual experience.

Of course they lead to some amusing experiences, for there is nothing which gives such a chance for the play of human impulse as office-seeking. I remember having a lady come into my office when I was Secretary of War. Her boy had passed the examination for West Point, but a medical board had examined him and found that his chest did not measure enough for his height. She came in to urge me to waive that defect. I explained to her the necessity for great care in the appointment of army officers, because if, after being commissioned, they had any organic trouble, they were disqualified for further discharge of their duty, and would be retired on three-fourths pay without rendering any real service to the government. She listened with gloom to my explanation, and asked me to look at the papers. I took them in her presence and went through them. I found that the young man had, on the basis of 100, made 93 per cent in all his mental examinations. That isn't done by every candidate for West Point, and there is no reason why we should not have brains as well as brawn in army officers. So I looked again at the measurements and concluded he was a man we ought not to lose. I told her: "Madam, I did not have so much difficulty in filling out my chest measurement. Your boy shows such general intelligence that I have no doubt he will have sense enough to pursue a regimen that will make him sufficiently enlarge his chest measurement, so I am going to waive the objection and let him in." She had not expected so quick a decision in her favor, and was taken back a little. She hesitated a minute, and then, with an angelic smile, she said to me, "Mr. Secretary, you are not nearly so fat as they say you are."

Then I had another experience. A lady in Washington, whose husband had some political influence, came and labored with me for six weeks or more to appoint her son to a position. She secured the aid of Senators and Congressmen in formidable number and came with them to see that they spoke with emphasis. The place was one requiring technical qualification, and following the recommendation of the head of the Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I then received a letter from the mother, saying that I was most ungrateful, since I declined to make her a happy woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She complained further that she had labored with her state delegation and got all the votes for an administration bill in which I was especially interested and this was the way I had rewarded her.

When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do is to think how you can be severe with a person who has committed an impropriety, or even been a little impertinent. Then you may compose an answer. Then if you are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the drawer. Take it out in the course of two days—such communications will always bear two days' delay in answering—and when you take it out after that interval, you will not send it. That is just the course I took. After that, I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could, telling her I realized a mother's disappointment under such circumstances, but that really the appointment was not left to my mere personal preference, that I had to select a man with technical qualifications, and had, therefore, to follow the recommendation of the head of the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go on to accomplish what she had hoped for him in the position which he then had. That mollified her and she wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had written as she had.

But the appointment I sent in was not confirmed at once and after an interval I received a letter which purported to come from her husband, though it was in the same handwriting as all the others. I was therein advised that, due to the nervous prostration that had followed her disappointment in this case, she had to take to her bed and had developed a most serious case of cancer of the stomach. Would I not restore her to health by withdrawing the first name and replacing it by her son's? I had to write another letter, this one to the husband, to say that I hoped the diagnosis would prove to be inaccurate, that I sympathized with him in the sorrow he must have in the serious illness of his wife, but that it was impossible to withdraw the name sent in. The man whom I appointed was confirmed, and within two days after I received that letter, we gave a musicale at the White House. The first two people to greet Mrs. Taft and me were this husband and wife, though the wife had so recently been in articulo mortis.