Some Truths About the Civil Service

THE following letter throws a good deal of light on the point of view from which many members of Congress regard the civil service: —

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 11, 1879.

Miss —, I promised you, last spring, that I would advise you of the fact when I desired your place for one of my people. In compliance with that promise I now respectfully notify you that I shall take steps to have you removed, as a representative from my district. Very truly, etc., -.

This is the frank letter of a frank man who was serving his first term as a member of the House of Representatives; he is now (October, 1882) a candidate for a third term. The letter was written to a woman clerk in one of the most important bureaus of the Treasury Department. The chief of the bureau said that she was one of the best clerks he had. She was not removed, because the heads of the bureau and division in which she still serves did not permit it. They knew her value, and, fortunately, the congressman had not then obtained power enough to do as he desired, without regard to the wishes of the treasury officers.

The letter shows how completely members of Congress are possessed of the belief that they have the appointing power. It is not exceptional doctrine that this frank writer advances. It is held by almost all of his colleagues in the legislative branch of the government, and the executive himself submits to it, except when he has friends to reward ; or, rather, when he has no enemies to punish. It is the exception when the President insists on his right to appoint and remove government employees as he may desire, and without regard to members of Congress. Generally, when he asserts himself, the member of Congress who is interested is thought to deserve executive wrath. Congressmen look upon the clerkships of the government as belonging to them, each one having a certain allotment to be distributed among the influential needy of his constituents. The member who wrote the letter jumped over one step in the process of removing a clerk which the opéra bouffe decorum prevailing in Washington makes essential. Probably he would not now be guilty of such an indiscretion as to write directly to a clerk, ordering the dismissal of one who is ostensibly another person’s subordinate. He knew the accepted theory, which has for its support a law portioning out the clerkships of the Treasury Department among the several States, but he was too new in Congress to realize that there are appearances to be kept up. His open avowal of his purpose to do what he would with his own was a great mistake. If he had begun his work privately with the assistant secretary or his appointment clerk, the chances are that he would have succeeded. The heads of the department undoubtedly recognized that he was attempting to do only what he had a right to do, but they could not consent to be accomplices to his blunt way of going to work.

The interest taken by congressmen in securing appointments for constituents appears to be looked upon as something extraordinary. It is not extraordinary, however ; it is perfectly natural employment for a good many of the men who are made members of the House of Representatives. The members themselves are the creatures of the spoils system, and their political vision is bounded by it. They know of no way to keep a political party in existence except by the distribution of clerkships. I have known three congressmen to devote half a day to urging the head of a bureau to remove a democrat from an unimportant place, and to appoint a republican in his stead. The place paid the man who filled it about fifty cents a day. This undoubtedly seems a waste of time to the business men of our great cities. It was not; if these congressmen had not been giving their energies to this fifty-cent place, they might have been seeking the removal of some really competent person from an important position in the government service. After one of this class of congressmen has done asking for places and pensions, and attending to private claims, and getting his district’s streams into the river and harbor bill, he has nothing to do. The real evil of our present civil service, in this respect, is not that such congressmen are prevented from attending to more important duties, but that the spoils system finds mischievous employment for men who ought not to be members of Congress, or who, being members, ought to have nothing to do. Good men, of course, are hampered by the system, and lose time that is important to them and to their constituents by reason of the demands made by people who are in search of places for themselves or for friends of “ the party.” Good men, however, are, as a rule, in favor of a reform of the civil service that shall take appointments and removals, and all the clerical machinery of the government, out of politics.

Although, as the letter printed at the beginning of this article indicates, congressmen regard clerical positions as their own property, they do not consider themselves the sole or the absolute owners. The real proprietor is the party. The leading purpose moving members of Congress in appointing persons to places is to benefit the political organization to which they belong, and to which they are indebted for their election. They are simply trustees for their respective factions. Their appointments and removals are made for the purpose of strengthening the party. As they must necessarily be the ultimate judges of what will benefit the party, however, they generally decide in favor of what will help themselves. They are, in a word, permitted some latitude in making their selections of persons, provided that, in the main, they consider the interests of the party. Now far removed this new theory is from the old-fashioned doctrine that the government is to be administered for the good of the whole country, and that a member of the minority party is as much interested in the government as one of the majority, it is unnecessary to discuss.

As the party in power owns the clerkships for its own advantage, it follows that congressmen are not the only trustees of this power. Congressmen look after the local interests of the organization, but the larger affairs have to be taken care of by men who stand on the higher plane of executive office. The President and members of the cabinet consider the national concerns of the party. They act sometimes with the advice of members of Congress, but at other times they are obliged to take matters into their own hands. As an illustration of this may be mentioned the fact that, not many years ago, a cabinet officer sent to his appointment clerk a direction to create twenty-one vacancies. The clerk sent back the answer that it would be extremely difficult to find so many people in the department who ought to be discharged. The secretary was annoyed by this answer, and sent a peremptory order to the clerk that the vacancies must be made; adding that he had twenty-one people for whom he must find places. The clerk, thus compelled, discharged the required number of persons arbitrarily, not considering their merits or demerits, or the length of their service. The secretary was obeyed. He was soon afterward the candidate for the presidential nomination of a large number of the best people of his party, whom he had deluded into believing him a civil service reformer, although he was constantly denouncing the civil service reform movement as a humbug, and this to his subordinates in the department.

The story of the management of one of the great departments of the government during a recent administration shows the evils attending the civil service in all their grossness. Unfortunately for himself, perhaps unfortunately for his desires, the head of the department had been placed under obligations to some of the worst politicians in the country, who followed him persistently and openly to the end of his term of office, demanding recognition and rewards for partisan work more degrading than had ever before been done in the country. Under the administration of which the secretary was a member, each cabinet officer was at liberty to do as he wished in the matter of the appointment and removal of his subordinates. This fact does not relieve the President from responsibility for an open and flagrant abuse of the appointing power, but it takes from the secretary every pretense of excuse for the manner in which he conducted this part of the business of his department. During his term of office, the spoils system flourished vigorously. The business of the department was conducted by a few overworked clerks, the retention of whom was made necessary by the idleness and incapacity of the majority. Men and women knew that efficiency had little to do with the keeping of their places, and that they might draw pay from the government as long as they retained their influence.

As no test of their real intellectual capacity had been made when they were appointed, comparatively few could render themselves worthy of promotion. The lowest grade became choked with people who had just enough intelligence to perform its humble duties, while the higher grades were crippled. Whenever congressional elections were about to take place, a panic seemed to seize the clerks. They were apprehensive lest their “influence” should be defeated, and they turned out of place. They robbed themselves and their families by paying political assessments from their small salaries. Not only were assessment papers circulated through the department, but the party collector was even permitted to sit in the room where the clerks received their pay, and to demand the percentages due to the political brigands who managed the campaign and the campaign fund. There were stories of actual distress published in the newspapers, caused by this robbery of the clerks and servants of the government ; of sick women going without necessary medical attendance; of houserent unpaid and food unbought; and of loss of employment by men who refused to pay assessments, — all this in order that money might be raised to send into “ doubtful districts.” The true story of the sufferings resulting from assessment circulars of campaign committees would excite the sympathy even of the men whose seats in Congress have been obtained with the proceeds of the plunder. But in all the years during which this great evil has been in existence, the clerks and watchmen and messengers and laborers have had no official to speak for them ; and notwithstanding all the fine promises made by party platforms and in inaugural addresses, in messages to Congress and even in statutes, they have never yet had a protector strong enough to defend them from political extortion.

The spoils system increased the force employed in the department beyond its requirements. When the complement was full in the regular bureaus, places were made for unprovided-for henchmen in one of two bureaus, the number of employees of which is not limited by statute, — or rather, by statute constructions. An illustration of the needless increase of force is furnished by the action of the head of one of the bureaus of the department at the time he entered upon the duties of his office. Although the work of his bureau was then as great as it had ever been in the history of the department, he cut down its clerical force twenty-five per cent. ; and he would have cut it down still more, had not members of Congress protested so strongly that he was compelled to desist. He was reducing too much the amount of patronage.

The secretary seemed to make an effort in the direction of civil service reform after he had been in the cabinet about a year. He appointed a commission of clerks to report to him a plan by which employees should be promoted from the lower to the higher grades, the promotion in each case to be given to the clerk standing highest in a competitive examination. At least one of the members of the commission was and still is one of the best men in the department, and is, as it is safe to say all the best men are, in favor of civil service reform. The plan agreed upon was precisely in accordance with the terms of the secretary’s order, but that gentleman had grown conservative after appointing the commission. He examined the report, and made his comment in writing; and, although the commission simply provided a method for carrying out his own direction, that no one should be promoted from a lower to a higher grade unless he or she should stand highest in a competitive examination, his reply was that he hardly thought he was prepared to make so radical a change as that suggested. He, however, promised to make use of the plan whenever, “in the opinion of the secretary, the public interest demanded.” Under this specious and convenient phrase, the spoils system was permitted to flourish, undisturbed by competitive examination or by any intellectual test, except that made by members of Congress themselves.

Some interesting facts of this administration ought to become part of the history of the civil service reform movement. In its second year, this secretary dismissed four women from clerkships in his most important bureau, and appointed four others to fill their places. One only of the four was known to the head of the bureau. Of the four removed, he stated, in a communication to the secretary, that one was the most industrious woman clerk in her division, and that another “ merited promotion, if ability, faithfulness, and efficiency were considered.” These removals and appointments, however, but aggravated an offense begun with the administration. Until then, it is believed, it had been the unbroken custom for the head of the bureau to nominate all his clerks. This official made a vigorous protest. In a long and very strong letter to the secretary, he took the ground that he should be permitted to select his own subordinates. He called the secretary’s attention to the fact that he was bonded in the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that his bond was given, among other things, “ for the fidelity of the persons to be by him employed.” He pertinently asked, “ Can an officer, so bound, consent that others, for any reason, should select for him his employees, who would be bound by gratitude to the one who selects, leaving the bonded officer responsible alone ?” And he added, with a force that cannot help meeting the approval of business men, “ Indeed, I do not believe that sureties could be found to join in an official bond with an appointee to this office, were it known to them that the employees, for whose fidelity he and they are by law held responsible, were to be selected without reference to his recommendation.” He urged that it was “ destructive of the discipline of the office to make appointments otherwise ” than on his recommendation ; that “such changes in the force as have been made in the last year and ten months tend to unsettle the confidence of employees that the stability of their appointments depends in any degree upon their efficiency and faithfulness in the performance of their duties; and ... it certainly cannot be sound practice that [the head of the bureau] should be made responsible for the official conduct of the employees, while having no voice in their selection.” He closed by referring to the fact that the appointments in the department were actually made, not by the secretary, but by an assistant secretary ; and he suggested that “ the head of this office has equal facilities with any subordinate official for forming a judgment as to the character of the employees required.”

This paper was referred to the assistant secretary, who actually made the appointments, and who was a machine politician of the worst class. The answer prepared by him argued that the head of the bureau had not the legal power to make appointments, — a power never asserted, but, on the contrary, expressly disclaimed. The secretary’s reply was in better temper, but he evaded the question at issue. He insisted on his power to make all appointments, but said that the head of the bureau might object, and that his objections ought to be heeded by the secretary, if that official, in the exercise of a “ wise discretion,” considered the objections “ well founded.” The secretary’s letter closed as follows : —

“ There can be no objection to the [head of the bureau] nominating persons whom he may think proper to fill vacancies, but it cannot be conceded that such nomination is a condition precedent to appointment, or that an objection of the [head of the bureau] to a person, appointed shall be fatal, if held by the secretary to be unreasonable.” In other words, and as further events demonstrated, the secretary proposed to do as he would concerning appointments to the clerkships in the bureau.

The reply to the secretary simply pointed out the errors into which the assistant secretary had fallen, and restated the bureau chief’s position. How far the objections which the secretary invited availed against the appointment of improper persons to clerkships may be judged from the following instances : A woman was named for a place in the bureau, the duties of which involved the counting of money. The chief knew that in the secretary’s office there were papers showing that the woman had been imprisoned in a penitentiary for forgery; had betrayed to a gang of counterfeiters some detectives, to aid whom she had been employed ; and had been, generally, a woman of bad character. The chief called the attention of the secretary to these important facts and to his invitation, and objected to her appointment. The only concession that the secretary would consent to make was that she should not fill the place for which she was first selected. He gave her another position, however, and afterward promoted her. Just as he was leaving office, he sent another woman to the bureau. Her duties were to be clerical, but she could not write legibly, nor spell correctly, even when she was copying from printed matter. The envelopes directed by her are still preserved as masterpieces of ignorance. The chief objected to her appointment; but the secretary insisted, and she had to be retained.

These facts show what can happen under the spoils system. A long and weary list of similar facts—similar in character, if not so exaggerated in degree — might be given. But that such outrages as these may be perpetrated under the forms of law ought to be sufficient to demonstrate the necessity of an immediate change. It may be, as politicians seem to assert, that their race will always remain so impure that such offenses will continue to be committed even against the law ; but the time to make the trial has surely come. The burglar plies his vocation notwithstanding the law, but that is not thought a reason for repealing the statutes against burglary.

Congressmen now violate the law by assuming the functions of the appointing power which the constitution gives to the executive, and they debauch the civil service by refusing to establish a system which will prevent their infringement of this fundamental law. How far they go in taking from the President his undoubted rights is shown by the letter which begins this article; how far its connection with party politics is injurious to the service is shown by the examples of abuses which have been given.

An experience of many years with the departments in Washington must convince an honest observer that the evil which is farthest reaching, because most common, can be cured by competitive examination alone. This evil is the lack of material in the lower grades of the service for promotion to the higher. This is a more dangerous because more insidious evil than the appointment of grossly incompetent persons. If that were as common as it is popularly supposed to be, it would in time cure itself. Naturally, most appointments are made to the first-class, or lowest, clerkships, and into these places members of Congress thrust the followers for whom they feel compelled to provide. It is not true that they do not take the intelligence of the appointees into account. The trouble is that they are satisfied with competency for the actual work that is required of firstclass clerks. That work does not call for much intelligence. Any one who can write legibly, and who can spell well enough not to make gross errors in copying, is able to satisfy the principal demands made upon first-class clerks. A congressman thinks his duty to the government discharged when he has ascertained that his constituent has just enough intelligence and training to perform the lowest duties that will be required of him. Congressmen are not half so bad as some of the reformers make them appear. No one of them would, as a matter of fact, take an “ end man ” of a negro minstrel troupe to the Secretary of the Treasury, and ask for his appointment to a clerkship, on the ground of his being the best comic singer and the best story-teller in the country. Congressmen have a higher respect for genius than this. The “end man ” might be recommended for a diplomatic position, but never for a clerkship. The man who will be urged for the clerkship will, in all probability, be one who has never been able to rise above a six or seven hundred dollar position in a country grocery store, and to whom a twelve hundred dollar government place means almost undreamedof wealth. He is perfectly competent, however, to do the work that is expected of him. Of course, he will not actually do it, because he is lazy, and, as he is appointed through congressional influence, he will hold his place, not by merit and industry, but by the same means that obtained him his clerkship. He has nevertheless the intellectual capacity to do the work of his desk. The great difficulty is that he has not the capacity to deserve promotion. This is the first sore spot in our civil service. If congressmen really secured the appointment of men because they were banjo players or comic singers, or simply because they distributed tickets at the polls, the present bad system would very soon break down, because the service itself would be destroyed. The evil would cure itself by its own enormity. As it is, congressional dealers in patronage can truly ask, “ Do we, as a rule, recommend men for first-class clerkships who are not competent to perform the duties required of them ? ” The answer must be that they do not, as a rule, select persons who cannot perform the easy duties of firstclass clerks. It might be better if they did. Now, at least, they have a mask for the evils of the system which they insist upon preserving.

The injury that the spoils system does to the service is felt in the higher grades of clerkships. Almost any head of a department or bureau will say that the only way in which the higher clerical positions can be filled properly is by promotion from the lower grades. Intelligent men and women, who begin as first-class clerks, and who do their work industriously and conscientiously, have an opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the manner of conducting business in the department generally, such as no outside person can have. When, however, the majority of the first-class clerks are persons without any capacity for improvement, promotion to the higher grades cannot go on as rapidly as it ought. Places must be left unfilled until congressmen have some really good men to be put in training in first-class clerkships ; or else persons must be assigned directly to the higher clerkships, and time must be taken by the heads of bureaus or divisions to give necessary instruction in the duties to be performed. In either event, the service is crippled, because by the present method of appointment the intelligence of applicants for clerkships is not determined. This is not a picture of the imagination. The Treasury Department has long been an illustration. It is suffering now, as it has been for years, because of the lack of proper material in the lowest grade of clerks, from which to secure the needed experts.

The trouble lies in the test of intelligence applied, and in the character of tenure. Congressmen say that they can make the best selections, for they know the applicants. This is one of the fictions of the spoils system. If the truth were known, it would doubtless be discovered that very few of the persons recommended for appointment to clerkships are personally known to the senators or members who vouch for them. Those who ask for clerkships are not generally the political workers, with whom the member from the district comes in contact. They are more likely to be dependent relatives or thriftless friends of the workers, and their appointment is demanded as a return for services that have been rendered the congressman. The inquiry made by the latter discovers just enough to make it certain that the applicant is not unfit for a position just above that of watchman or messenger. In addition, the meagre and unsatisfactory pass examination comes to the help of the government. What John Stuart Mill said was true of it in England is also true of it here : “ It is merely adequate to exclude dunces.” The worthlessness of these examinations has so long been recognized by all who know anything of the civil service that it is unnecessary to discuss them. Briefly, they may be said, when they are used, to complete the congressional test, and to determine fitness for first-class clerkships, without discovering any capacity for growth or improvement.

It is a common remark among politicians that the test imposed by competitive examination lacks one essential element, and that is the power to discover the business talents of applicants for clerkships. The implication that business talents are needed is very amusing to those who are familiar with government clerks as a class. Clerks and men of affairs are different kinds of beings. If the men who seek clerkships in government offices were possessed of the talents that make successful business men, they would not be content to earn small salaries for recording what is done by the executive heads of their departments. The late President Garfield once said that what struck him most forcibly, in going through the Treasury Department, was the noticeable lack of back-head among the clerks. Most of the men who find employment under the government, as clerks, are persons who have failed in their efforts to make a living in business pursuits, or who have never had the energy or the self-confidence to make the attempt to carry on affairs for themselves. As a rule, they belong to the numerically large class of beings whose work in life is to see that the fruits of enterprise and intelligence are preserved after they have been plucked by stronger men. They are the book-keepers, and copyists, and voucher guardians of the world. At least, that is what the government expects most of them to be. A very few of them deal directly with men in a way to demand such a knowledge of human nature as will enable them to protect the interests of the government; but most of the persons whose duty it is to make contracts, to govern and regulate the conduct of minor employees, — in short, to be executive officers, — are not those who would be affected by the proposed reform of the civil service. No intelligent reformer desires to bring officers of the government within the rules proposed for the regulation of appointments and promotions to clerkships. The effort that is now making is directed simply to providing a better method for securing clerks, — persons who are not in any sense in official life. They are merely the assistants of those holding office. They decide nothing. They advise nothing. They have no power. They administer no laws. They are no more officers of the government than are the fingers and pen of the head of the bureau or division whom they serve.

It is true that many of the clerks in government employ consider themselves in office, and speak of themselves as office-holders. It is common enough to hear women clerks, whose sole duty it is to copy letters, or other manuscript, for the printer, say that they are “in office.” The fact, however, that these people thus indulge their vanity, or that they misconceive their own status, can make no difference. It cannot change them from what they are,—the implements with which their official superiors perform the duties required by law. The habit of looking on them as office-holders, however, has been the cause of a good deal of embarrassment to civil service reform. There is a vast difference between the honors of office and the place of a clerk ; and the argument in favor of the purchase, by the government, of the clerical services of a man or a woman because of his political beliefs or her congressional “influence” reaches its absurd but logical conclusion when it is used in favor of a certain kind of pen, or a particular brand of paper. The active politician who has wriggled into Congress has, however, just as much right to complain because his friend’s pens or paper are not bought on his recommendation as he has to fly into a passion because a certain set of fingers, also recommended by him, are not hired to use the pens and paper. The clerk is no more an officer of the government than are the tools with which he does his work.

The talk about business qualifications of first-class clerks is simply one of the refuges of a weak cause. Almost the first thing a politician does, when a project for supplanting the spoils system is presented to him, is to look about for an argument against it. What he is after is only something to say in opposition. It does not matter how absurd he may be. If he has only a formula to repeat, that satisfies him, and he clings to it obstinately and doggedly, because he has determined never to give in. This talk about the business talents is one of the formulæ. It should be borne in mind that, under the reform proposed in Senator Pendleton’s bill,— which embraces what the reformers are agreed upon, — no one is to receive a permanent appointment until after a probation of several months, and appointments are to be made to the lowest, or first-class, clerkships. This makes the “ business capacity ” argument apply to these lowgrade clerks.

Of course the men who develop business capacity in doing their clerical work will have a chance for promotion to executive places, under almost any system. They have it even under the wretched system that now obtains. There is no better illustration of this than that afforded by the experience of the very able treasurer of the United States, who has risen to his present office from a first-class clerkship. There are men in every department of the government who, like him, have risen to high administrative office through the sheer force of their own characters ; and in almost every instance they have developed and given evidence of their capacity by the discharge of their duties in lower positions in the various departments to which they have been attached. These men receive promotion because the business of the departments would be almost fatally crippled without them. The rewards given for good service and intelligent work under the spoils system are very few. They are just what are absolutely necessary to enable the civil service to accomplish anything at all. Even the few expert men who are retained are occasionally attacked by politicians in Congress, who want their places for valuable henchmen ; but the politicians who have become heads of departments have learned that without these men their own administrations would be gross failures. Therefore, a few good men may be found in every department of the government, who, with much labor and under many disadvantages, and with great weariness of soul because of the surrounding inefficiency, carry on the work of their departments. There is no better method of determining the capacity of men for what are really administrative offices under the government than that by which these men have been tested. They have, with very few exceptions, been instructed for their higher duties by actually performing the duties of those who are now their clerks.

Under the proposed reform, all offices requiring administrative ability would naturally be filled from the service. The little that is now done in this direction is proof enough of this. There is really no test that can determine the possession of qualifications needed in the government employ that can equal that of service, and there is not an honest and experienced head of a department or bureau who will not admit this. Under the spoils system, however, education by experience is very largely prevented, because, first, the lower-grade clerks have not the intelligence to acquire it; and, second, the uncertainty of tenure takes away the incentive to work. The promotions that have been made for efficiency have been those only that have been forced on the departments. The interference of congressmen with appointments prevents the recognition of capacity. A senator or a member who has secured a clerkship for a friend, or a friend’s friend, naturally thinks him fit for advancement, after some service in the department on which he has been saddled. If the head of the office protests that the clerk is unfit for promotion, the congressman attributes the opposition to personal hostility, or to some other unworthy motive. He pretends, then, to have suspicions that this bureau chief is not the person he ought to be, and he threatens investigation, or a complaint to the President, or that he will “ fight his bill,” or that he will have his appropriations cut down, or that he will do something that will make his enemy’s official life a burden to him. This keeps the unhappy “bureaucrat” constantly fighting for the preservation of the service from resentful attacks. He must either employ inefficient persons, or see his appropriations reduced to such an extent that he cannot properly administer his office. The evils, therefore, of the spoils system, so far as they relate to the intelligence of the clerks, are felt chiefly in the matter of obtaining suitable persons for the higher grades. The fact that very few first-class clerks can ever become worthy of promotion is one that is recognized by those whose duty it is to superintend their work. The congressional test of capacity is so crude and unsatisfactory that it determines nothing. What is needed is some method that will ascertain the real intellectual character of applicants. When a person is appointed to a firstclass clerkship, the government is interested in knowing that he has intelligence; that he possesses the elements of growth ; that he can receive instruction, and so profit by his service in a lower position that he will become fitted for a higher. There is no test that can be applied that will discover this so well as a thorough intellectual examination. Pass examinations amount to nothing, because they do not go far enough. In a competitive examination, the person who comes out first demonstrates his superiority; and when the government secures the services of such a man it is assured of a clerk who has at least one essential qualification for the work he will be called upon to do. He has given the best evidence in the world that he possesses the ability and the energy to acquire knowledge. This is one great step in advance of anything that is offered by the congressional test, which at its very best simply finds that the applicant has acquired the power to do the simplest kind of clerical labor. Competitive examination must determine not only the actual information of the candidate, but his possession of the power of development. In other words, while experience has taught the heads of departments and bureaus in Washington that, under the spoils system, the lowest grade of clerkships is filled with people who ought never to be promoted, the introduction of the system of competitive examinations, proposed by the advocates of a reformed civil service, must necessarily put into the government employ persons of sufficient intelligence to fill the higher grades.

The test of character, under the spoils system, is made after an applicant receives his appointment; and after the bad character of a clerk has been discovered, it is more than likely that the official who wants to discharge him will find an angry and threatening member of Congress standing in his way, and alluding significantly to his power over the appropriation bills and to his influence with the President. It is unnecessary, however, to point out the advantages of the merit over the spoils system, in this respect. Under the one, no clerk would receive an appointment without being first put on probation; under the other, applicants are made clerks at once. Under the one, clerks must go to a higher place from the grade just below and the probability is that the clerk best fitted for promotion will receive it; under the other, it has been demonstrated that it is hard to find persons who are worthy of advancement.

Undoubtedly, a change in the character of the tenure of government clerkships would do much to cure this evil. There are not many incentives now for a clerk in a lower grade to train himself for promotion. Many do educate themselves by faithful service, but they are superior men and women. If a congressman, by chance, puts a really intelligent person into a first-class clerkship, the knowledge that the retention of his place and promotion depend on influence rather than on efficiency is a powerful means of suppressing any ambition to excel. An improvement of tenure might accomplish something, but the service cannot be made what it ought to be without a change of the method of selecting clerks for the lower grades. The conclusion to which an honest and thorough examination of the facts of our civil service leads is that congressmen appoint to clerkships, as a rule, people who, from lack of intelligence or industry, never prepare themselves for promotion to places where skilled experience is required.

This is the truth about the civil service, so far as the character of the clerks is concerned. It is not part of the purpose of this paper to discuss the other gross evils of the spoils system. The country ought by this time to be thoroughly informed of how much time is spent by heads of departments in attending to the demands of applicants for offices and clerkships. It ought now to be a recognized fact that it is impossible for cabinet officers to be really the heads of their departments. Some of them never pretend to acquire a knowledge of their duties. No department of the government has escaped the demoralizing influences of “ politics.” No head of any department gives his time and his talents to the service of the government. They are demanded by and given to others, who have no right to them.

The gravest evil of the spoils system is its influence on politics. This subject, also, has been exhaustively discussed, and ought now to be thoroughly understood. It is, however, one of the weaknesses of politicians that they think that the power to distribute the spoils strengthens them personally. On the contrary, it weakens them. The power breeds a race of shifty, cunning politicians, who, as a rule, are worthless citizens. For every office or clerkship a congressman has to fill, there is a horde of applicants. For every gratified seeker, there are a hundred disappointed. The appointment always makes more enemies than friends, and the man who depends wholly on his employment of patronage for retention in public life is always driven out in the end. The machine politicians, as a class, are helped by the spoils system; for the disappointed office-seekers invariably take up arms for some one on whom they think they can rely for favors. They desire to put out of place the man who disappointed them, and to put in place some one who will treat them better. The spoils keep them in politics, and they are beaten every time a decent man is sent to Congress, or is elected to any office to which is attached the power of appointment. Were it not for the spoils system, good men might be sent to Congress for many terms in succession, and these might have time for the doing of some legislative work. As it is, Congress is largely made up of a succession of machine politicians, who are elected to distribute the spoils, and who are turned out for making mistakes in the distribution.

The contrast between the spoils and the merit systems was splendidly illustrated in the administration of Mr. Hayes. The Department of the Interior furnished the contrast. In it there was a real reform of the civil service. No one was appointed except after winning his place in a competitive examination; no clerk was removed except for cause and after a hearing. The reform suffered because it was not general, and because it felt the influences that prevailed throughout the other departments of the government. Assessment collectors threatened its clerks, although the secretary forbade the circulation of their papers within the department, and there was always the fear of what the next secretary might approve or disapprove. Work that ought to have been done by a special commission had to be done by a committee of the clerks of the department, in addition to their regular duties. But, notwithstanding all the drawbacks that resulted from the general indifference of the administration to the movement, Mr. Schurz’s experiment was a decided success ; and it is surprising that the advocates of a reform of the civil service have not made more use of it, as an argument. It certainly demonstrated that the adoption of the English system, or something like it, is practicable in this country. It gave the Interior Department better clerks than it had ever had before, and, what is more, it gave the secretary practically all his time to devote to the work of the government. He had no applicants for place to trouble him, for it very soon came to be understood that success in a competitive examination was the only way open to seekers after employment. The clerks were contented, for they knew that they would not lose their places as long as they remained efficient and honest. For the same reason, they worked faithfully. The indolence that is always noticed among those who rely on political influence for appointment to and retention in place is never seen among those who depend on merit. Singularly enough, there was none of the insolence on the part of the clerks, in their treatment of those having business with the department, which is so confidently predicted, by the enemies of civil service reform, as sure to follow the adoption of a system which shall make tenure of place permanent. For once was seen a department of the government managed on business principles, and it was a wholesome and pleasant sight to all who believe that the civil service should be managed in the interest of the government, and not in the interest of a political machine.

Henry L. Nelson.