SIX YEARS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM* 



NO question of internal administration is so im- 

 portant to the United States as the question 

 of Civil Service reform, because the spoils system, 

 which can only be supplanted through the agencies 

 which have found expression in the act creating the 

 Civil Service Commission, has been for seventy 

 years the most potent of all the forces tending to 

 bring about the degradation of our politics. No re- 

 public can permanently endure when its politics are 

 corrupt and base; and the spoils system, the appli- 

 cation in political life of the degrading doctrine that 

 to the victor belong the spoils, produces corruption 

 and degradation. The man who is in politics for the 

 offices might just as w 7 ell be in politics for the nioney 

 he can get for his vote, so far as the general good 

 is concerned. When the then Vice-President of the 

 United States, Mr. Hendricks, said that he "wished 

 to take the boys in out of the cold to warm their 

 toes,'* thereby meaning that he wished to distribute 

 offices among the more active heelers, to the raptur- 

 ous enthusiasm of the latter, he uttered a sentiment 

 which was morally on the same plane with a wish to 



* Scribner's Magazine, August, 1895. 



