UNITED STATES]
CIVIL
SERVICE
all the entailed evils of the patronage system, culminated in Great Britain during the reign of George III., and was one of the efficient causes of the American revolution. Trevelyan characterizes the use of patronage to influence legislation, and the giving of colonial positions as sinecures to the privileged classes and personal favourites of the administration, by saying, “It was a system which, as its one achievement of the first order, brought about the American war, and made England sick, once and for all, of the very name of personal Government.” It was natural that the founders of the new Government in America, after breaking away from the mother-country, should strive to avoid the evils which had in a measure brought about the revolution. Their intention that the administrative officers of the Government should hold office during good behaviour is manifest, and was given thorough and practical effect by every administration during the first forty years of the life of the Government. The constitution fixed no term of office in the executive branch of the Government except those of president and vice-president; and Madison, the expounder of the constitution, held that the wanton removal of a meritorious officer was an impeachable offence. Not until nine years after the passage of the Four Years’ Tenure of Office Act in 1820 was there any material departure from this traditional policy of the Government. This Act (suggested by an appointing officer who wished to use the power it gave in order to secure his own nomination for the presidency, and passed without debate and apparently without any adequate conception of its full effect) opened the doors of the service to all the evils of the “spoils system.” The foremost statesmen of the time were not slow to perceive the baleful possibilities of this legislation, Jefferson,1 Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and many others being recorded as condemning and deploring it in the strongest terms. The transition to the “spoils system” was not, however, immediate, and for the next nine years the practice of reappointing all meritorious officers was practically universal; but in 1829 this practice ceased and the Act of 1820 lent the sanction of law to the system of proscriptions which followed, which was a practical application of the theory that “ to the ^‘spoils” vlctor belong the spoils of the enemy.” In 1836 system. the provisions of this law, which had at first been confined mainly to officers connected with the collection of revenue, were extended to include also all postmasters receiving a compensation of $1000 per annum or more. It rapidly became the practice to regard all these four years’ tenure offices as agencies not so much for the transaction of' the public business as for the advancement of political ends. The revenue' service from being used for political purposes merely came to be used for corrupt purposes as well, with the result that in one administration frauds were practised upon the Government to the extent of $75,000,000. The corrupting influences permeated the whole body politic. Political retainers were selected for appointment not on account of their ability to do certain work but because they were followers of certain politicians; these “ public servants ” acknowledged no obligation except to those politicians, and their public duties, if not entirely disregarded, were negligently and inefficiently performed. Thus grew a saturnalia of spoils and corruption which culminated in the assassination of a president. Acute conditions, not theories, give rise to reforms. In the congressional election of November 1882, following the assassination of President Garfield as an incident in 1 See letter to Monroe, 29th November 1820, Jefferson’s Writings, vii. p. 190. A quotation from tin; letter is given at p. 454 of the Fifteenth £.eport of the U.S. Civil Service Commission.
101
the operation of the spoils system, the voice of the people commanding reform was unmistakable. Congress assembled in December 1882, and during the same month a bill looking to the improvement of the civil service, which had been pending in the Senate for nearly two years, was finally taken up and considered by that body. In the debate upon this bill its advocates declared that it would “ vastly improve the whole civil service of the ^ country,” which they characterized as being at 1883. that time “ inefficient, expensive, and extravagant, and in many instances corrupt.”2 This bill passed the Senate on 27th December 1882, and the House on 4th January 1883, and was signed by the president on 16th January 1883, coming into full operation on 16th July 1883. It is now the national civil service law. The fundamental principles of this law are :—(1) selection by competitive examination for all appointments to the “ classified service,” with a period of probationary service before absolute appointment; (2) apportionment among the states and territories, according to population, of all appointments in the departmental service at Washington ; (3) freedom of all the employees of the Government from any necessity to contribute to political campaign funds or to render political services. For putting these principles into effect the Civil Service Commission was created, and penalties were imposed for the solicitation or collection from government employees of contributions for political purposes, and for the use of official positions in coercing political action. The commission, in addition to its regular duties of aiding in the preparation of civil service rules, of regulating and holding examinations, and certifying the results thereof for use in making appointments, and of keeping records of all changes in the service, was given authority to investigate and report upon any violations of the Act or rules. The “ classified ” service to which the Act applies has grown, by the action of successive presidents in progressively including various branches of the service within it, from 13,924 positions in 1883 to some 80,000 (in round numbers) in 1900, constituting now about 40 per cent, of the entire civil service of the Government and including practically all positions above the grade of mere labourer or workman to which appointment is not made directly by the president with the consent of the Senate.3 A very large class to which the Act is expressly applicable, and which has not been brought within its provisions by executive action, is that of fourth-class postmasters, of whom there are between 70,000 and 80,000. In order to provide registers of eligibles for the various grades of -positions in the classified service, the United States Civil Service Commission now holds annually throughout the country about 300 different kinds of examinations. In the work of preparing these examinations and of marking the papers of competitors in them, the commission is authorized by law to avail itself, in addition to its own corps of trained men, of the services of the scientific and other experts in the various executive departments. In the work of holding the examinations it is aided by about 1300 local boards of examiners, which are its local representatives throughout the country and are located at the principal post offices, custom houses, and other government offices, being composed of three or more Federal employees in those offices. About 50,000 persons 2 See Senate Report No. 576, 47th. Congress, 1st session ; also U.S. Civil Service Commission's Third Report, p. 16 et seep, Tenth Report, pp. 136, 137, and Fifteenth Report, pp. 483, 484. 3 The progressive classification of the executive civil service, showing the growth of the merit system, is discussed, with statistics, in the U.S. Civil Service Commission’s Sixteenth Report, pp. 129-37. A revision of this discussion, with important additions, appears in the Seventeenth Report.
