Harper's Weekly/The Campaign Against Civil Service Reform

by Carl Schurz

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

In one Legislature after another bills are presented for the introduction of the merit system in the civil service of the respective States. In a large number of cities, North and South and East and West, the merit system has already been adopted to govern the municipal service — in Chicago by a popular majority of 50,000 — or popular movements led by the most respectable citizens are on foot to secure its adoption. In all parts of the country civil service reform is progressing with a rapidity beyond the most sanguine expectations of its friends. Only in the State of New York, where the merit system exists under the safeguard of a constitutional mandate, a systematic effort is being made to nullify it. An association has been formed for that purpose under the name of “the Progressive Civil Service League,” with Mr. Abraham Gruber as its drummer. A public meeting has been held, at which the principles of the merit system were vociferously assailed and ridiculed, and its advocates denounced as hypocrites, self-seekers, and monarchists. The grossest and most reckless misrepresentations of the conduct and results of competitive examinations were put forth by the speakers, and vulgar cries characterized the audience. Their statements impugning the methods of the merit system have with conspicuous swiftness and accuracy of stroke been so completely and crushingly disposed of by Mr. McAneny, the secretary of the Civil Service Reform Association}}, that those who made them should hide their heads in shame as convicted falsifiers. There is no room here for recounting the lies and the refutations. But it may be said that in two respects the meeting served a good purpose. It proved conclusively how little the most unscrupulous enemies of civil service reform have to say in the line of fact against its fruits, and it clearly revealed the real spirit and the true aims of those who assail the merit system as “unpractical” and “undemocratic.”

The champions of this “progressive” movement had for months ransacked the records of the Civil Service Board of this city, which they were freely permitted to do, to the end of finding questions asked by examiners that might be ridiculed, and they had left no stone unturned to discover persons appointed after competitive examinations who had proved unfit for their places. What was the result? As to such questions, the speakers at the meeting scorned the idea that the general intelligence of an aspirant should be tested by such puzzles as who Abraham Lincoln was, or what city was the capital of this country; and they thought it supremely ludicrous as well as undemocratic that, since Horace Greeley had written his editorials in a tangled scrawl, a candidate for a clerkship should be required to write in a legible hand. And, finally, they brought up the well-worn fable that a candidate for the place of street-cleaner was examined about the orbit of the planet Mars — while at the same time they were obliged to confess that of late the questions asked had been fairly practical. As to the fitness for office of persons appointed upon competitive examination, they knew of one incompetent inspector of buildings, and they had heard of somebody who had found a policeman unable to show him the way to the Bowery, because he had recently come here from Oneida County. These instances of failure were substantially all they produced after a most diligent search in a municipal service counting many thousands of men appointed under the civil service rules. Even if they had found ten or twenty times as many failures among them, it would still be a most brilliant testimony for the effectiveness of the merit system in cleansing and improving a municipal service which, while the old spoils practices prevailed, was swarming not only with incompetents, but with loafers, blackmailers, and thieves.

That the self-styled “progressives” aim at the restoration of those vicious spoils practices was plainly proven at the meeting. All their criticisms of the merit system and all their artful propositions to make the examinations “practical” culminate in the one demand that the person to be appointed to office must belong to the ruling party, and that, as the party in power changes, the administrative machinery must be taken to pieces, to be manned anew with partisans who helped to bring about the change. And all their reasoning in support of this demand is based upon the vile assumption that there would be neither patriotism nor political parties among us if the party man or the patriot had no prospect of reward in the shape of official spoil to inspire him — as if there had been neither patriotism nor political parties in the early times of the republic before the spoils system existed! This assumption is so revolting a libel upon the character of the American people that the man uttering it should be spurned as a despicable slanderer by every citizen who loves his country.

What was it that gave the civil service reform movement so powerful an impulse all over the country? It was not an agitation carried on by a few theorists, nor the sudden spreading of a “fad,” as Mr. Gruber and his fellows would make the unwary believe. It was the dearly bought experience that, as the machinery of our national government grew in dimensions and complexity, the public business could not be performed with either efficiency or honesty if the places in the departments were distributed as personal favors or as rewards for partisan activity. It was the constantly growing popular disgust at the scandals of the barbarous spoils carnival accompanying every change of administration. And more than all this, it was the glaring inefficiency and the reeking rottenness of our partisan municipal governments which brought the true nature of the spoils system and of political machine rule home to the perception of every observing citizen. For these intolerable evils a just popular instinct discovered in civil service reform at least a partial remedy — taking the administrative machinery “out of politics,” and thus transforming the public departments from patronage-broker shops into business offices. The same just popular instinct saw the means to this end in the competitive merit system, which opens the way to public place not merely to the favored partisan worker, but to every citizen, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, who can show his fitness for the duties to be performed, and which, regardless of politics, religious creed, or social station, gives the best men the best chance. And whenever this system has been introduced and faithfully carried out, it has, as proven by evidence which its detractors labor in vain to refute, wrought so great an improvement in the morals as well as the efficiency of the public service that no patriotic citizen, fairly understanding it, will countenance for an instant its impairment.

No doubt there are people who complain of it. Every party heeler to whom it blocks the road to the public crib; every office-seeker who fears the competition of better men; every political boss seeking to feed his henchmen out of the citizens' pockets; every public man in high or low place distrusting his ability to maintain himself without organizing a following by the distribution of patronage — all these clamor for putting the administrative departments back “into politics” again. And these are the forces engaged in this assault upon the merit system. The trouble which exasperates such politicians as Mr. Gruber is easily understood. Without the prospect of the spoils of office they cannot hold their hands of heelers together. And therefore they shriek at the top of their voices that because of civil service reform patriotism will die out and popular government will vanish from the earth. What they slanderously attribute to the American people is really true of their own followers. “No pap, no patriotism” is their cry. But it is not the cry of good American citizenship. And so it is not the government of the people, but the rule of the bosses and machines, that will be in danger of perishing. Hence their anguish.

To call their movement against the merit system “progressive civil service reform” is one of the most audacious frauds on record. We might as well leave our thoroughfares to be swept by the rain, and the garbage to be removed by dogs and buzzards, and call it “progressive street-cleaning”; or return to the persecution of Quakers and the burning of witches, and call it “progressive Christianity.” But these “progressive” spoils politicians are reckoning without their host. In this State the boss and the Governor and the Legislature for the time being may be on their side. But they will find in their way not only the Constitution and the courts, but also a public sentiment too enlightened and patriotic to be gulled by cheap talk or to be frightened by wild cries.

Carl Schurz.