Some Popular Objections to Civil Service Reform: In Two Parts. Part Two

VII.

“ THIS is the civil service that he [Jefferson] taught us, sir, — ‘ Is the man honest? Is he capable ? ’ These were the only requirements. If then he is a man who is deserving, his employer should be the sole judge of it. When I make application for admission as an employee in one of the departments here, the head of the department is the man to inquire into my qualifications and honesty.” ¹

That a representative of Tammany Hall should arise in the national Congress and gravely inveigh against the merit system on the ground that it does not embody the Jeffersonian requirements of honesty and capacity, is a spectacle calculated to excite pensive reflections upon the decadence of American humor.

That “ ancient and powerful organization ” might have informed itself that the Pendleton Act does not prevent the “ head of a department ” from looking into “ the qualifications and honesty ” of an applicant. The appointive power is not transferred by that measure. No one pretends that the secretary of a great department has the time personally to test the fitness, by examination or otherwise, of those applying for the numerous clerkships under his control. Under any system this duty must be delegated. The Civil Service Commission is a convenience, simply, and is created as a guarantee of fair play. It does not appoint; it merely certifies to the result of the public competitive examinations held under its auspices. Its functions are ministerial, and its inquiries may be treated as preliminary. It is true that the head of the department cannot go outside of the list of eligibles in making appointments; but it is true also that the whole public is invited to the competition, and thus has the opportunity to range itself within those lists.

If heads of departments, or rather chiefs of bureaus, ought to choose their own subordinates, then the objector quoted above has furnished an excellent reason why the spoils system, which he advocates, should be abolished. An unwritten law governing that system robs the chief of bureau of all discretion in the matter of appointments. Congressmen dictate to him whom he shall employ.

The questions, Is the applicant honest ? Is he capable ? are not controlling. Practically, the chief is precluded from discriminating inquiry; he must take what the Congressman sets before him. Nor is this all. He cannot discharge an unruly or inefficient employee without endangering his own head. Numerous instances might he quoted to show that clerks who have been dismissed by the chief for the good of the service have been restored by him under the pains and penalties of congressional insistence.

A system which permits outsiders thus to interfere in the conduct of the departments, and which transforms the civil service into a bankrupt court for the liquidation of political debt, can hardly he extolled as promotive of good administration. Much less are its defenders in a position to assail the merit system, which would appoint a chief of bureau by promotion, and which would secure to him such independence and discretion as are necessary to the proper performance of his duties.

VIII.

“The duties of all public officers are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance ; and I cannot but believe that more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience. I submit, therefore, to your consideration whether the efficiency of the government would not be promoted, and official industry and integrity better secured, by a general extension of the law which limits appointments to four years.” ²

President Jackson himself furnishes the best commentary upon his own text. Without waiting for Congress to act upon his recommendation to extend the four-year law, he proceeded immediately to put his theory into practice by making removals wholesale, thus inaugurating the spoils system as we now know it. The effect was not at all what the publichad been led to expect by the words of the annual message. Webster said, in a speech,³ that during the first three years of the new administration (1829-32) more nominations had been “rejected [by the Senate] on the ground of unfitness than in all the preceding years of the government; and those nominations, you know, sir, could not have been rejected but by votes of the President’s own friends.” Nor did those persons who succeeded in passing the ordeal of senatorial confirmation give character to the service. The good name of the country was scandalized by great frauds. The loss which occurred in the handling of government funds during the eight years of Jackson’s rule averaged $7.52 per thousand, an increase of $3.13 over that of his predecessor, John Quincy Adams. During the administration of Van Buren, — that perfect exponent of the spoils system and protege of Jackson, — the deficits reached the great sum of $11.72 per thousand, the high-water mark of inefficiency and corruption in the official history of the United States, This marked deterioration of the public service may be easily explained. Incumbents had been removed for political reasons, and not for purposes of administrative reform. Little wonder, then, that President Jackson should advocate the vacation of office by law, and thus save himself and his successors the odium of those evils which follow in the train of an arbitrary and indiscriminate proscription of place-holders.

IX.

“Rotation in office, change, is an absolute necessity. Our whole system abhors perpetuity. Rotation and change, the frequent examination of the servant’s accounts, and the frequent removal of the servant himself, is an essential element to secure the perpetuity of free institutions.” ⁴

An examination of the servant’s accounts should not wait upon removal, and the servant himself should not be removed unless there is cause for it. “ Change for the sake of change ” is not only unsound as a political principle, but it is impracticable as a business method. It would wreck any railroad that adopted it. In essence it is a pseudosocialism. The theory that the citizen owes a duty to the state is supplanted by the doctrine that the state owes a place to the citizen ; that government is a device for the support of its subjects ; and that every man should be maintained in some mysterious and circuitous manner by every other man. This opens an alluring vista of possibilities. If every man “ has a right to an office ; ” if incumbents should be removed simply because they have been in “ long enough; ” if official life is a “merry-go-round,” it follows duly that rotation must successively induct into place every adult in the United States, for a period of time to be ascertained only by a nice calculation in the rule of three. Should it he objected that rotation is not rotatory, — that is, that it does not include all, — then the doctrine lacks even the apology of a common benefit, and becomes merely an alimentary provision for a few hungry officeseekers. As such it will not commend itself to the popular judgment. The people are not interested in the fortunes of itinerant place-hunters. They are interested, however, in having the business of the government — that is, the business of themselves — well done. But to refuse to recognize merit by promotion ; to remove all officers, the faithful and the unfaithful, the efficient and the inefficient, the honest and the dishonest, indifferently, is to put a premium upon sloth, bungling, and peculation. In these days of sharp competition, commercial houses do not conduct their business so, and would not if they could. To employ a man with scant regard to his fitness, and to discharge him despite his skill, trustworthiness, and experience, would be to court ruin and to build up rival concerns. But it may be urged that the government is a monopoly, and can afford to ignore the economies; that the American people are rich, dislike cheeseparing, and are fond of “ munificent public expenditure.” Is the art of administration beneath the dignity of an intelligent people ? It should be their pride, The United States is the most extravagant of civilized governments. What it wastes would enrich any third-class power. States and municipalities are groaning under debts recklessly incurred. In some cases, where the burdens have been too heavy to be borne, or where the publie conscience has been weak, repudiation has left its indelible stain. Princely domains have been voted to railroads by federal and state legislatures. Tens of millions of dollars have been sunk in the improvement of unused water-ways, in half-finished canals, and in badly made roads. The enormous fees and salaries paid in many States to county officers have been a prolific source of office jobbery and of corrupt elections, and, it may be remarked in passing, afford a field for civil service reform which as yet is scarcely explored. As to municipal government, its name is a byword and a hissing. Valuable franchises, which ought to yield a permanent public revenue, have been, and are being, constantly given away to corporations. Insecure public buildings, defective sewage systems, illy paved and illy lighted streets, leaky aqueducts, and impure water supplies commemorate in almost every city the carelessness of a free people and the unfitness of their servants. A computation of the cost of government in this country, made by some careful statistician, would be an interesting object-lesson to the taxpayer. That much-exploited individual is awakening at last, to the fact that something is wrong. He is beginning to doubt whether the “hustler or the “ worker” is the ideal administrative officer. To choose a city civil engineer because he is a “good fellow,” and to appoint an architect of federal buildings because he is a cousin of the President’s step-aunt, no longer seems to him to be a wholly rational proceeding. The idea that every American is qualified, without previous training or experience, to fill any office has proved to be an expensive delusion. The most incompetent men in the civil service of the United States are those who are appointed for short terms. About 3500 of the higher-grade officers are so selected by the President and the Senate, but the business of the places themselves is in the hands of subordinates, upon whom the superior is helplessly dependent. As a rule, the presidential Postmaster knows nothing of the workings of his office. Although he is the highest in rank, he becomes, by force of circumstances, the pupil of the lowest. He learns his duties at the expense of the government, and, as often as not, is removed at the very time he begins to he serviceable. The same is also true of other officers, including the members of the cabinet. The case of the last named, however, is exceptional. These officials are quasi-legislative, as well as administrative. As the political advisers of the President, and indirectly of Congress, and as the exponents of a party or national policy, they should be removable at pleasure. If the effect of this commingling of duties is not always salutary, it furnishes sometimes an agreeable diversion to the disinterested spectator. The facility with which members of the cabinet are shifted from one department to another, during the same administration, indicates either great versatility in the American administrative officer, or (more probably) a profound and impartial ignorance that is not less impressive. At the best, the technical knowledge possessed by the heads of departments is superficial, and the rapidity of cabinet changes merely emphasizes the need for experienced subordinates. Indeed, experience, of which duration in office is generally the measure, is absolutely indispensable.

But the advocates of rotation may cite the many excellences of the civil administration of the United States as a proof of their theory. It disproves it. Parties have not alternated in the control of the government every four years, as the Constitution permits. They have had extended leases of power, and, while many changes have been made in the personnel of the service, the body of the employees have been retained long enough to enable them to become familiar with their duties, and to administer their offices with economy and dispatch. Mr. Eaton, the American encyclopaedist of civil service reform, writing in 1884, said that “ the average periods of service in the lower offices, of late, at least, have been two or three times four years, and have been the longest where administration has been best and politics least partisan and corrupt. The average time of service of the more than 42,000 postmasters, whose terms are not fixed by law, has probably been about ten years, at least, if we exclude post offices established within that period.” ⁵

Here, then, we are face to face with the difficulty (before stated) which confronted England, namely, to obtain good government, either the spoils system must be abolished, or some one party must be continued in power indefinitely.

The history of the last administration is illustrative, although it is too fresh in memory to need specific and detailed criticism. Suffice it to say that, in the change of parties, the efficiency of the civil service was greatly impaired by sweeping and causeless removals. The people were justly indignant at this needless disordering of public business, and the press was a chorus of complaint from the beginning of the presidential term to the end. It is the well-considered opinion of many that if President Cleveland bad redeemed the promises he had so copiously made, he could not have failed of reflection in 1888. But it should not be forgotten that, in the event of his so doing, lie might have failed of renomination. Under the spoils system politicians make presidential candidates, and they will not be balked twice in the same man. As it was, Mr. Cleveland crossed the creek, but could not ferry the river. Fearing that his record as an administrative officer would challenge defeat, he dexterously introduced a new issue into the canvass; but without avail. He was abandoned by enough advocates of the merit system in one State alone to elect his opponent. The people demanded reform, and it is the onerous duty of the present administration to meet this demand. If it succeed in fulfilling public expectation, it must make capacity, integrity, fidelity, and experience the test of appointment; the lack of these qualities, the test of removal. “ Rotation ” is already discredited in business communities. It exists in theory only because it is infrequent in practice. A few successive trials of it will be a liberal education to all persons concerned.

But it is urged, with some patriotic fervor, that “ our system abhors perpetuity ; ” that rotation is a fundamental principle of democracy ; and that it is essential to the permanence of our institutions.

Whether a government, established for the common benefit of the whole people, “ abhors ” the “perpetuity ” of anything that helps to secure that end is a question which perhaps even the wayfaring man might answer, without invoking the aid of the casuist. But it is not relevant to the issue.

The government of the United States was formed as a protest against tyranny ; that is, against the rule of unfit and irresponsible men. The fitness and responsibility of rulers were among the germinal ideas of the Constitution. Hereditary kingships and hereditary houses of legislation were abolished by that instrument. Merit, and not accident of birth, was to be the test of official preferment. Civil service reform embodies this ideal. It says that those officers of the executive department whose duties, being purely administrative and not legislative, are the same, whatever party is in power, shall be appointed from the whole people, solely on account of fitness ; that they shall not be secured in place for any fixed term, be it short or long ; and that their tenure shall depend upon their good behavior and efficiency. Obviously, this tenure, which means the instant decapitation of the unfit servant, is a very different thing from life tenure, which means a vested interest in office.

Several facts prove conclusively that the founders of the republic took this view of the matter. In the first place, they fixed the term of no officer in the executive department except that of the President and the Vice-President. Secondly, they provided by express words in the Constitution that the judges of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts should hold their offices during good behavior. Thirdly, they applied this system to the civil administration at the very beginning of the government. The allegation, then, that a tenure of this character, which was an established usage for forty years, is radical, revolutionary, and subversive of “our system” may be leniently ascribed to the inaccurate tendencies of the florid and rhetorical mind.

Strange as it may appear to earnest but misguided vociferants, there has been no statutory change in the tenure of the great majority of inferior officers in the civil branch of the executive department. Custom, it is true, has wrought a decided change in that it has substituted a tenure of favoritism and partisanship ; but no legal barrier to continuous service has been erected. An appointee under the spoils system may grow gray in the government service, provided always he can gain and retain the influence of some potent politician. Probably the advocates of rotation will not greatly object to this, if the incumbent belongs to “their side.” Indeed, it is painful, as a commentary upon the perishable nature of political convictions, to observe how speedily the party in power becomes reconciled to that perpetuity in office wdiicli erstwhile was so abhorrent. It leaves it to the party which is out of power — those who are unbidden to the feast — to become “ aghast ” at the enormity of the thing. Did not the dominant party thus acquiesce periodically in a stable holding, the doctrine of rotation would have vanished in disgrace long since.

As far back as 1835, Mr. Calhoun pointed out the distinction which is vital to a proper understanding of the rotation theory. In advocating the repeal of the four-year law, with the ablest men of the Senate, including Webster, Clay, Benton, and others, he said : —

“I will not undertake to inquire now whether the principle of rotation, as applied to the ordinary ministerial officers of a government, may not be favorable to popular and free institutions, when such officers are chosen by the people themselves. It certainly would have a tendency to cause those who desire office, when the choice is in I he people, to seek their favor; but certain it is, that in a Government where the Chief Magistrate has the filling of vacancies, instead of the people, there will be an opposite tendency — to court the favor of him who has the disposal of offices — and this for the very reason that when the choice is in the people their favor is courted. If the latter has a popular tendency, it is no less certain that the former must a contrary one.”⁶

If this reasoning suggests to zealous advocates of rotation the propriety of making the ministerial offices of the executive department elective, and thereby amenable to the people, another quotation— one from the great publicist, John Stuart Mill — may be permitted : —

“ A most important principle of good government in a popular constitution is that no executive functionaries should be appointed by popular election, neither by the votes of the people themselves nor by those of their representatives. The entire business of government is skilled employment,; the qualifications for the discharge of it are of that special and professional kind which cannot be properly judged of except by persons who have themselves some share of those qualifications, or some practical experience of them. The business of finding the fittest persons to fill public employment — not merely selecting the best who offer, but looking out for the absolutely best, and taking note of all fit persons who are met with, that they may be found when wanted — is very laborious, and requires a delicate as well as highly conscientious discernment; and as there is no public duty which is in general so badly performed, so there is none for which it is of greater importance to enforce the utmost practicable amount of personal responsibility, by imposing it as a special obligation on high functionaries in the several departments. All subordinate public officers who are not appointed by some mode of public competition should be selected on the direct responsibility of the minister under whom they serve.” ⁷

If, to suppose a case, the 57,000 postmasters in the United States were elected by the people, where would he the efficiency of the Post-Office Department? Instead of a coördinated whole, regulated by and responsible to a single head, there would be a multitude of independent units—a debating society. The Postmaster-General, denuded of all authority, would be a figure-head, an adviser, not a commander. Even if the power of removal were secured to him, he could not exercise it without affronting the judgment of the particular constituency that elected the displaced officer. Appeals from his decisions to the electoral bodies would he frequent, and would result in endless confusion. Under such circumstances an administrative system would be impossible. Blame for maladministration could not be fixed, and responsibility is vital to good government. “ As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It should be apparent to all the world who did everything, and through whose default anything was left undone. Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened."’⁸

Municipalities are beginning to lay this lesson to heart. Government by boards of aldermen and by councils, whose members are answerable, not to the whole city, but to separate districts, is a famous contrivance for ill doing and not doing. For these joint feasors there is no common court. But if authority were fused, it would be easier to mete out punishment. A mayor elected by the whole community, and endowed with the power of appointing boards of public works, would receive the full meed of praise or blame. Charged with malfeasance, he could not. Adam-like, lay it on the woman. Solely responsible, he would present a conspicuous figure for public Sacrifice. Complexity is the weakness of popular government; simplicity is its genius. The mass move slowly, and it is the height of unwisdom to distract their attention from one to many by diffusing responsibility. This reasoning applies to all administrative government, whether local or national. It tells strongly against the four-year law, which divides between the President and the Senate the responsibility of appointing the higher administrative officers of the United States. This law, which is the exemplar of rotation, increases the power of the President by compelling a new appointment every four years. It also decreases his responsibility. To use the words of Webster, “ the law itself vacates the office, and gives the means of rewarding a friend without the exercise of the power of removal at all.” ⁹ If the friend thus appointed is incompetent, unfaithful, or dishonest, the President can plead, in extenuation, that the Senate cooperated with him in the selection of the officer. But the Senators themselves escape individual censure, because all confirmations occur in secret session. It was said in defense of this cumbrous method of choice that the Senate, in acting upon a nomination by the President, would look solely to the fitness of the candidate, and that “ its advice and consent ” would be disinterested. Experience refutes this. In many instances, nominations are ratified, not because the nominees are fit, but because their names have been suggested by the very Senators who pass upon them. In other instances, the power of “senatorial courtesy ” is invoked, and nominations are rejected because the nominees are personally objectionable to the Senators of some particular State. Division of responsibility here means division of spoil.

The first four-year law (passed in 1820) was the herald of the patronage system. “ The bill was retroactive, and it made official terms expire upon the eve of the presidential election.” It was drawn by Mr. Crawford, who expected to be, and was, a candidate for the presidency in 1824.

“The avowed reason, or rather the apology, for the new policy was that it would remove unworthy officers; the speciousness of which, appears in the facts that the tenures of all in office, worthy and unworthy alike, were, without inquiry, severed absolutely ; and nothing but official pleasure was to protect the most meritorious in the future. There was no showing of delinquencies ; no charge that the President could not or would not remove unworthy officials ; not a word of discussion, not a record of votes, on this revolutionary bill! ” ¹⁰

In the lapse of time the provisions of the bill were extended. With the downfall of the congressional caucus the initiative in the nomination of Presidents passed to the country at large. Thus it happened that “ workers ” were needed in every quarter to advance the interests of candidates, and these men must be paid. But how ? To abolish tenure on good behavior and to legislate incumbents out of office every four years was an easy and admirable expedient. This was done in the case of postmasters drawing a salary of a thousand dollars per annum, or more, and of some others, and the law now covers nearly all the high-salaried officials on the civil list. The Pendleton Act affects only their subordinates; and our administrative system to-day presents the anomaly of filling certain inferior offices by the test of merit, and of jobbing out the superior offices as political rewards. If the civil service act is to be honestly enforced, the four-year law must be repealed. Postmasters, collectors, heads of divisions and bureaus, who are themselves the creatures of favoritism, and who are daily beset by “workers ” clamoring for office, cannot be expected to look kindly upon a law which is a reproach to their own existence, and which denies them the power to pay the men who have made them what they are. Another consideration is, the highest positions demand the largest capacity and the longest experience. But the four-year law makes the supply smallest where the demand is greatest. Again, to subject subordinates to ignorant and incapable superiors is to demoralize the service. The lower should look upward, not the higher downward.

It may be admitted that there is a deep-rooted popular objection to the repeal of the four-year law, and the reason is plain. Federal offices have been used so long as party spoils, and have been so much the subject of contention, that the people have come to regard them as not less important than legislative offices, and to look with as grave distrust upon permanent tenure in the one as in the other. This mistake is not unnatural. These offices are filled by prominent politicians, who, by reason of their election work, have become obnoxious to many of the community. To keep such factious persons in place permanently seems to the public the greatest kind of an evil. But the repeal of the four-year law will not perpetuate this evil; it will abolish it. It will bring into office a different class of men, who will be little in the public eye, and whose energies will he devoted to the public, and not to party interests.

So much for the doctrine of rotation, seriously and tenderly considered. Stripped of its pretensions and misleading verbiage, it means, not the purification of the civil service, but the displacement of one horde of office-seekers by another. It is the cry of foray, not the watchword of reform. It is an excuse, not a reason. It is the sign and symbol of a predatory raid, the rallying banner of landless resolutes enlisted to an enterprise that hath a stomach in it. Looked at in any way, rotation is a perpetual recurring menace to the stability of our government. It is the prop of a falling party and the instrument of fraud. It is a constant temptation to politicians to use public salaries as a fund with which to pay private debts, thus compelling the people to furnish the means for their own corruption and to defeat their own will. It wrecks the lives of tens of thousands of young men by offering, as a bait to cupidity, high wages which outbid the market. It makes idle expectants of the industrious, starves the few it feeds, and lures the mass to vagrancy. It subverts the true ideal of office, transforming public servants into private henchmen, and partisans into camp followers. It degrades skilled labor, and makes the government an almshouse. It breeds parasites, markets citizenship, and suborns public opinion. To sum up, it makes of administration a chaos, of politics a trade, and of principle an interest. Rotation is not an “ essential element to secure the perpetuity of free institutions.”

Oliver T. Morton