168 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM.) 



been delineated by no enemy of the Republi- 

 can party or of the Administration in the re- 

 port which I have read to the Senate. 



"The bill has for its foundation the simple 

 and single idea that the offices of the Govern- 

 ment are trusts for the people ; that the per- 

 formance of the duties of those offices is to be 

 in the interest of the people ; that there is no 

 excuse for the being of one office or the paying 

 of one salary except that it is in the highest 

 practicable degree necessary for the welfare of 

 the people ; that every superfluous office-holder 

 should be cut off; that every incompetent 

 office - holder should be dismissed ; that the 

 employment of two where one will suffice is 

 robbery ; that salaries so large that they can 

 submit to the extortion, the forced payment, 

 of 2 or 10 per cent, are excessive and ought 

 to be diminished. I am not speaking of purely 

 voluntary contributions. 



" If it be true that offices are trusts for the 

 people, then it is also true that the offices 

 should be filled by those who can perform and 

 discharge the duties in the best possible way. 

 Fidelity, capacity, honesty, were the tests es- 

 tablished by Mr. Jefferson when he assumed 

 the reins of government in 1801. He said then, 

 and said truly, that these elements in the pub- 

 lic offices of the Government were necessary 

 to an honest civil service, and that an honest 

 civil service was essential to the purity and 

 efficiency of administration, necessary to the 

 preservation of republican institutions. 



u Mr. Jefferson was right. The experience 

 of eighty years has shown it. The man best 

 fitted should be the man placed in office, es- 

 pecially if the appointment is made by the 

 servants of the people. It is as true as truth 

 can be that fidelity, capacity, honesty, are es- 

 sential elements of fitness, and that the man 

 who is most capable and most faithful and 

 most honest is the man who is the most fit, 

 and he should be appointed to office. 



" These are truths that in their statement 

 will be denied by none, and yet the best means 

 of ascertaining that fitness has been a vexed 

 question with every administration of this 

 Government and with every man who has 

 been charged with the responsibility of its 

 execution. We know what is the result. Pass 

 examinations have been tried; professions have 

 been tried ; honest endeavors have been tried ; 

 a disposition to live faithfully up to these re- 

 quirements has been tried ; and yet we know, 

 and the experience of to-day shows it, that they 

 have all made a most lamentable failure. We do 

 know that now so great has been the increase of 

 the powers of this Government and the number 

 of officers under it that no President, no Cab- 

 inet, no heads of bureaus, can by possibility 

 know the fitness of all applicants foi the subordi- 

 nate offices of the Government. The result has 

 been, and under the existing system it must 

 always be, that the President and his Cabinet 

 and those who are charged with the responsi- 

 bility have remitted the question of fitness to 



their own partisan friends, and those partisan 

 friends have in their turn decided the question 

 of fitness in favor of their partisan friends. 

 The Administration has need of the support of 

 members of Congress in carrying on its work. 

 It therefore remits to members of Congress of 

 its own party the questions of appointment to 

 office in the various districts. These gentle- 

 men, in the course of their political life, natu- 

 rally (I do not find fault with them for it) find 

 themselves under strain and pressure to secure 

 a nomination or a renomination or election, 

 and they use the places to reward those whose 

 friends and families and connections and aids 

 and deputies will serve their purpose. 



"I put it to gentlemen, particularly to my 

 friends on this side of the chamber, because 

 you have not the opportunity to exercise this 

 patronage as much as our friends on the 

 other side, whether or not the element of 

 fitness enters largely into the questions of ap- 

 pointment in your respective districts and 

 States. It can not be. The necessities of the 

 case prevent it. The pressure upon men who 

 want to be elected prevents it. The demands 

 that are made by partisan friends and those 

 who have been influential and potent in secur- 

 ing personal triumph to gentlemen who may 

 happen to be in such relation to the appointing 

 power that they have the influence to secure 

 appointment prevents it. The result is, as I 

 have stated, that instead of making fitness, 

 capacity, honesty, fidelity, the only or the es- 

 sential qualifications for office, personal fidel- 

 ity and partisan activity alone control. 



" When I came to the Senate I had occasion 

 more than ever before to make some investiga- 

 tion upon this subject, and I found to my sur- 

 prise the extent to which the demoralization 

 of the service had gone. I saw the civil service 

 debauched and demoralized. I saw offices dis- 

 tributed to incompetent and unworthy men as 

 a reward for the lowest of dirty partisan work. 

 I saw many men employed to do the work of 

 one man. I saw the money of the people shame- 

 fully wasted to keep up electioneering funds 

 by political assessments on salaries. I saw the 

 whole body of the public officers paid by the 

 people organized into a compact, disciplined 

 corps of electioneerers obeying a master as if 

 they were eating the bread of his dependence 

 and rendering him personal service. 



'*! believed then, and I believe now, that 

 the existing system which, for want of a better 

 name, I call the ' spoils system, 1 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 execu- 



