People were at last recognizing the folly of using the multiplying public offices for party spoils.The quarrel between Congress and President Johnson over removals, and the Tenure of Office Act, focused popular attention on the constitutional question of appointment and removal, and the recklessness of the political manager during Grant's two terms disgusted the thoughtful citizen.
The first attempts to apply efficiency to the civil service had been made when pass examinations were used for sifting candidates for clerkships in the Treasury Department in 1853, when such tests were prescribed by law for the lowest grade of clerkships.
The head of the department was given complete control over the examinations, and they were not exacting.In 1864 Senator Sumner introduced a bill "to provide for the greater efficiency of the civil service." It was considered chimerical and dropped.
Meanwhile, a steadfast and able champion of reform appeared in the House, Thomas A.Jenckes, a prominent lawyer of Rhode Island.
A bill which he introduced in December, 1865, received no hearing.But in the following year a select joint committee was charged to examine the whole question of appointments, dismissals, and patronage.Mr.Jenckes presented an elaborate report in May, 1868, explaining the civil service of other countries.This report, which is the corner stone of American civil service reform, provided the material for congressional debate and threw the whole subject into the public arena.Jenckes in the House and Carl Schurz in the Senate saw to it that ardent and convincing defense of reform was not wanting.In compliance with President Grant's request for a law to "govern not the tenure, but the manner of making all appointments," a rider was attached to the appropriation bill in 1870, asking the President "to prescribe such rules and regulations" as he saw fit, and "to employ suitable persons to conduct" inquiries into the best method for admitting persons into the civil service.A commission of which George William Curtis was chairman made recommendations, but they were not adopted and Curtis resigned.The New York Civil Service Reform Association was organized in 1877; and the National League, organized in 1881, soon had flourishing branches in most of the large cities.The battle was largely between the President and Congress.Each succeeding President signified his adherence to reform, but neutralized his words by sanctioning vast changes in the service.Finally, under circumstances already described, on January 16, 1883, the Civil Service Act was passed.
This law had a stimulating effect upon state and municipal civil service.New York passed a law the same year, patterned after the federal act.Massachusetts followed in 1884, and within a few years many of the States had adopted some sort of civil service reform, and the large cities were experimenting with the merit system.It was not, however, until the rapid expansion of the functions of government and the consequent transformation in the nature of public duties that civil service reform made notable headway.When the Government assumed the duties of health officer, forester, statistician, and numerous other highly specialized functions, the presence of the scientific expert became imperative; and vast undertakings, like the building of the Panama Canal and the enormous irrigation projects of the West, could not be entrusted to the spoilsman and his minions.
The war has accustomed us to the commandeering of utilities, of science, and of skill upon a colossal scale.From this height of public devotion it is improbable that we shall decline, after the national peril has passed, into the depths of administrative incompetency which our Republic, and all its parts, occupied for so many years.The need for an efficient and highly complex State has been driven home to the consciousness of the average citizen.
And this foretokens the permanent enlistment of talent in the public service to the end that democracy may provide that effective nationalism imposed by the new era of world competition.
