Harper's/Civil Service Reform and the People

by Carl Schurz

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM AND THE PEOPLE

With the politicians who advocate a return to the spoils system it has become a favorite argument that civil service reform as embodied in the existing law is not popular, and that if the question whether it should be sustained or abandoned were submitted to a vote of the people, there would be a large majority adverse to it. In support of this allegation they refer us to the loud clamor for the opening of the gates of the classified service which is kept up with growing impatience by a certain class of party workers; to the flood of letters certain members of Congress — such as Mr. Grosvenor from Ohio and Senator Gallinger from New Hampshire — are receiving, in which the repeal of the civil service law is vehemently demanded; and to the fact that a “civil service amendment” to the Constitution of Maryland, voted upon by the people of that State at the last election, was defeated.

As to the clamor proceeding from the ranks of party workers for the repeal of the civil service law, and as to the multitude and the urgency of the letters containing the same demand which encumber the mail of certain members of Congress, the facts are admitted. But those facts do not prove that the people are against civil service reform. They prove only that a number of persons who have long been anxious to get to the public crib without passing the examinations prescribed by the civil service law are now shouting more loudly than ever before, because they think that if their present chance pass away they will never have another; and that as the President is unwilling to break his and the party's pledges, these persons are all the more glad to find in the Senate and the House of Representatives men of more elastic conscience, into whose bosoms they can pour their woes without any fear of alarming a sage intelligence, and whom they can hope to excite to incessant vociferation in the advocacy of their desires. It is a well-known fact that persons who want things to which their title is questionable are apt to become the most prolific letter-writers; and if the members of Congress who hear so much from the enemies of civil service reform would only publish the names of their correspondents, it would at once become manifest how little these deserve to be called “the people.”

It was a significant coincidence, with a touch of humor in it, that during the recent annual meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League, in Cincinnati, the principal Republican morning paper in that city, the Commercial Tribune, while publishing on one page a flaming onslaught upon the civil service law from the pen of Representative Grosvenor, who insists that “the people” are imperiously calling for its abolition, repeated editorially on another page its own emphatic endorsement of President McKinley's saying that “the system has the approval of the people,” and added that “this is a sentiment in harmony with the belief of an overwhelming majority of the citizens of Cincinnati, of Ohio, and of the Union.” And what the members of the Civil Service Reform League saw and heard of the citizens of Ohio went far to confirm that judgment.

Nor is the result of the recent vote in Maryland to be considered as a sign of a drift in the opposite direction. The civil service reformers of that State had drafted an amendment to the State Constitution which they desired the Legislature to submit to the people. The amendment came out of the Legislature in so disfigured a shape that it was doubtful whether its adoption would not rather discredit than advance the cause of civil service reform. Had the amendment been such as the friends of that cause desired, an energetic campaign would have been made in its favor. As it was, that plan was of course abandoned. And, more than that, while some of the civil service reformers thought it best to give the amendment a nominal countenance, others declared themselves frankly against it. It had virtually no advocates. No wonder that it failed! It is more surprising that it received even as many votes as it did.

But whenever the merit system has been submitted to a popular vote in good faith, it has issued triumphantly from the contest. In Chicago it received an astonishing majority. In Evanston, Illinois, and in Seattle and Tacoma, State of Washington, the people emphatically sanctioned its embodiment in the municipal charters. In Los Angeles, California, it was voted upon, together with other charter amendments, and received a majority of votes, but not the two-thirds required there to give such amendments force. Had it been voted upon alone, its success might have been greater. The ratification by the people of New York of the civil service amendment to the State Constitution, together with other amendments, can, of course, not be considered such a triumph as it would have been had that clause been ratified separately; but it may indeed be said that the civil service clause was far from impeding the adoption of the whole body of new constitutional provisions, and that ever since, while being attacked by the spoils politicians, it has, in a steadily increasing measure, enjoyed the decided favor of public opinion, and found vigorous defence in the best part of the press of the State without distinction of party. It is therefore the declared policy of the friends of civil service reform to secure, wherever possible, the submission of the embodiment of the merit system in State constitutions and in municipal charters to the popular vote, with the full confidence that the system needs only full and fair discussion to secure for it the approval of the sound sense and the patriotism of good citizens.

This confidence grows stronger as in the discussions now going on two things are constantly becoming clearer to the popular understanding. One is the democratic quality of the competitive principle upon which the merit system is based. The artful pretence of the spoils politicians, that the examinations as they are held under the civil service law give college-bred men an undue advantage over all others, and are therefore calculated to impart to the public service an aristocratic character, has long been exploded by statistics proving that where the merit system was in force not more than ten per cent. of the successful candidates have been college graduates, and outside of the scientific branches of the service hardly more than six per cent. But that pretence was intended to obscure to the popular eye the important fact that not the merit system but the spoils system is the aristocratic one, inasmuch as it makes the obtaining and the keeping of public employment dependent upon the favor of the powerful, which favor can be won and retained only by political or personal service; and that not the spoils system, but the merit system is the democratic one, inasmuch as it opens the way to public employment through free competition alike to the poor and the rich, to the lowly and the powerful, on equal terms, without regard to personal or political service rendered or to be rendered, and as it thus gives the best man the best chance independently of the favor of anybody. The more clearly this vital difference between the two systems impresses itself upon the popular mind, the more generally it will be recognized that the merit system embodying the great democratic principle of the equality of opportunity before the law is, in the truest sense of the term, the people's cause, and that its assailants are enemies to the right of every citizen freely to compete for public employment without being dependent upon the favor of the powerful. And there are many signs indicating that those most interested, the masses of the people, are beginning keenly to appreciate this feature of the question.

The second thing that promises good results is the impression produced by the kind of warfare at present being waged against the civil service law in Washington. The brutal cynicism with which certain Republican Senators and Representatives kick aside the solemn pledges of their party contained in its national platforms for a quarter of a century — pledges upon which the party has constantly asked for the votes of the people — shocks the popular conscience. From day to day it is becoming more evident that those who clamor for the repeal, or at least the virtual emasculation, of the civil service law have not taken the trouble to inform themselves even of the simplest facts, but put forth the most astonishing falsehoods about the operation of the law with an unscrupulousness beyond belief. The ignorant and flippant recklessness with which they misrepresent the effects of the merit system cannot fail to convince any candid mind that they have nothing in view but the distribution of spoils among their hangers-on, no matter how the public interest may suffer. And when they threaten the President with “trouble in the party” unless he do things which they know would morally ruin him, the spectacle is simply revolting to the popular sense of decency. Indeed, the assailants of the merit system in Congress will have no reason to be surprised if before long they hear something very disagreeable to them from “the people” whose approbation of their course they claim with such noisy assurance.

Carl Schurz.    

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