CIVIL SERVICE REFORM DEMANDED

By George William Curtis.

CURTIS gave the best years of his useful life as an editor and publicist to bringing about civil service reform in this country. In 1871 President Grant appointed the first Civil Service Commission, with Curtis as chairman. From that time until 1883, when "a constitutional, practical and effective measure for the remedy of the abuse known as the spoils system" was adopted by Congress, Curtis fought valiantly for the "merit system."

Personally he never sought political office, though many attractive posts were offered him. He was long the chief editor of Harper's Weekly, and enhanced his reputation by establishing and conducting a department in Harper's Magazine called The Editor's Easy Chair.

This address, delivered before the American Social Science Association, in 1881, is taken from his "Orations and Addresses," by permission of Harper & Brothers.

A VITAL and enduring reform in administrative methods, although it be but a return to the constitutional intention, can be accomplished only by the commanding impulse of public opinion. Permanence is secured by law, not by individual pleasure. But in this country law is only formulated public opinion. Reform of the Civil Service does not contemplate an invasion of the constitutional prerogative of the President and the Senate, nor does it propose to change the Constitution by statute. The whole system of the Civil Service proceeds, as I said, from the President, and the object of the reform movement is to enable him to fulfill the intention of the Constitution by revealing to him the desire of the country through the action of its authorized representatives. When the ground-swell of public opinion lifts Congress from the rocks, the President will gladly float with it into the deep water of wise and patriotic action.

Now, it is easy to kill weeds if we can destroy their roots, and it is not difficult to determine what the principle of reform legislation should be if we can agree upon the source of the abuses to be reformed. May they not have a common origin? In fact, are they not all bound together as parts of one system? The Representative in Congress, for instance, does not ask whether the interests of the public service require this removal or that appointment, but whether, directly or indirectly, either will best serve his own interests. The Senator acts from the same motives. The President, in turn, balances between the personal interests of leading politicians President, Senators, and Representatives all wishing to pay for personal service and to conciliate personal influence. So also the party labor required of the place holder, the task of carrying caucuses, of defeating one man and electing another, as may be ordered, the payment of the assessment levied upon his salary all these are the prices of the place. They are taxes paid by him as conditions of receiving a personal favor. Thus the abuses have a common source, whatever may be the plea for the system from which they spring. Whether it be urged that the system is essential to party organization, or that the desire for place is a laudable political ambition, or that the spoils system is a logical development of our political philosophy, or that new brooms sweep clean, or that any other system is un-American whatever the form of the plea for the abuse, the conclusion is always the same, that the minor places in the Civil Service are not public trusts, but rewards and prizes for personal and political favorites.

The root of the complex evil then is personal favoritism. This produces congressional dictation, senatorial usurpation, arbitrary removals, interference in elections, political assessments, and all the consequent corruption, degradation, and danger that experience has disclosed. The method of reform, therefore, must be a plan of selection for appointment which makes favoritism impossible. The general feeling undoubtedly is that this can be accomplished by a fixed limited term. But the terms of most of the offices to which the President and the Senate appoint, and upon which the myriad minor places in the service depend, have been fixed and limited for sixty years, yet it is during that very period that the chief evils of personal patronage have appeared.

If, then, legitimate cause for removal ought to be determined in public as in private business by the responsible appointing power, it is of the highest public necessity that the exercise of that power should be made as absolutely honest and independent as possible. But how can it be made honest and independent if it is not protected so far as practicable from the constant bribery of selfish interest and the illicit solicitation of personal influence? The experience of our large public patronage offices proves conclusively that the cause of the larger number of removals is not dishonesty or incompetency; it is the desire to make vacancies to fill. This is the actual cause, whatever cause may be assigned. The removals would not be made except for the pressure of politicians. But those politicians would not press for removals if they could not secure the appointment of their favorites. Make it impossible for them to secure appointment, and the pressure would instantly disappear and arbitrary removal cease.

So long, therefore, as we permit minor appointments to be made by mere personal influence and favor, a fixed limited term and removal during that term for cause only would not remedy the evil, because the incumbents would still be seeking influence to secure reappointment, and the aspirants doing the same to replace them. Removal under plea of good cause would be as wanton and arbitrary as it is now, unless the power to remove were intrusted to some other discretion than that of the superior officer, and in that case the struggle for reappointment and the knowledge that removal for the term was practically impossible would totally demoralize the service. To make sure, then, that removals shall be made for legitimate cause only, we must provide that appointment shall be made only for legitimate cause.

Mr. President, in the old Arabian story, from the little box upon the seashore, carelessly opened by the fisherman, arose the towering and haughty demon, ever more monstrous and more threatening, who would not crouch again. So from the small patronage of the earlier day, from a Civil Service dealing with a national revenue of only $2,000,000, and regulated upon sound business principles, has sprung the un-American, un-Democratic, un-Republican system which destroys political independence, honor and morality, and corrodes the national character itself. In the solemn anxiety of this hour the warning words of the austere Calhoun, uttered nearly half a century ago, echo in the startled recollection like words of doom : "If you do not put this thing down it will put you down." Happily it is the historic faith of the race from which we are chiefly sprung, that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It is that faith which has made our mother England the great parent of free States. The same faith has made America the political hope of the world. Fortunately, removed by our position from the entanglements of European politics, and more united and peaceful at home than at any time within the memory of living men, the moment is most auspicious for remedying that abuse in our political system whose nature, proportions and perils the whole country begins clearly to discern. The will and the power to apply the remedy will be a test of the sagacity and the energy of the people. The reform of which I have spoken is essentially the people's reform. With the instinct of robbers who run with the crowd and lustily cry "Stop thief!" those who would make the public service the monopoly of a few favorites denounce the determination to open that service to the whole people as a plan to establish an aristocracy. The huge ogre of patronage, gnawing at the character, the honor and the life of the country, grimly sneers that the people cannot help themselves and that nothing can be done. But much greater things have been done. Slavery was the Giant Despair of many good men of the last generation, but slavery was overthrown. If the spoils system, a monster only less threatening than slavery, be unconquerable, it is because the country has lost its convictions, its courage and its common sense. "I expect," said the Yankee as he surveyed a stout antagonist, "I expect that you're pretty ugly, but I cal'late I'm a darned sight uglier." I know that patronage is strong, but I believe that the American people are very much stronger.