Carl Schurz - Congress and the Spoils System

Carl Schurz

Published by Good Press, 2020

EAN 4064066414191

Table of Contents

An Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League at Washington, D. C., December 12, 1895.

It is with a feeling of peculiar satisfaction that I greet the fifteenth annual meeting of the national Civil Service Reform League at the seat of the National Governmentthe place where the necessity of the Reform we advocate has been most conspicuously demonstrated, and where also its most conspicuous and fruitful successes have been achieved.

No intelligent observer who visits Washington from time to time can fail to be struck with the evidences of the constant growth of the national Government in the magnitude and scope of its functions, corresponding to the multiplication of the public and private interests that come into contact with it. From a thin string of agricultural settlements on the Atlantic coast, here and there dotted with small trading towns, this Republic has in a century expanded into a vast empire spanning a continent, excelling in wealth and material power every other nation on the globe. With its growth it has changed its character. Its bucolic stage has long been passed. Its agricultural interests, however great, have lost their former predominance. That great store of rich virgin lands which formerly offered home and sustenance to the advancing population, has shrunk to petty proportions, and will soon altogether cease to play an important part in our social development. The expansion of our industrial activities and of our facilities of communication has attracted large masses of humanity to our cities, several of which are already far beyond the million line, while others are pressing hard upon it. According to present appearances the time is not very distant when a majority of the American people will be congregated in towns. Altogether, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that in some important respects we are approaching the social conditions of the old world. It is true, we still observe striking and essential differences, but they are gradually growing less.

Under these circumstances the municipal governments of our large cities are confronted by problems of unaccustomed and constantly increasing magnitude and complexity; and the State and national governments, too, find themselves burdened with new duties and responsibilities which force an enlargement of their functions and their machinery, and more exactingly tax their working capacity as well as their wisdom. I do not mean to inquire here whether this expansion of the province of government is desirable or undesirable, but merely to point it out as a fact and to invite attention to some of its consequences.

There are certain propositions so self-evident and so easily understood that it would appear like discourtesy to argue them before persons of intelligence. Such a one it is, that as the functions of government grow in extent, importance and complexity, the necessity grows of their being administered not only with honesty, but also with trained ability and knowledge; and that in the same measure as this necessity is disregarded in a democratic government, the success and the stability of democratic institutions will be impaired. But while every sane man accepts this proposition as self-evident in theory, it may be said that every opponent of Civil Service Reform denies it in practiceand, I regret to add, a good many men deny it in practice who would object to being called opponents of Civil Service Reform.

DANGER TO DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

When I speak of the success and stability of democratic institutions being imperiled, I do not mean the danger of a sudden, grand and startling collapse, but I mean the danger of a gradual decay of those elements which are essential to their vitality. I have always been a firm believer in the excellence of democratic governmentthe government, as Abraham Lincoln defined it, of the people, by the people and for the people. It is a government of the people, inasmuch as in the people all sovereignty resides. It is a government by the people, inasmuch as the people make the laws and direct the conduct of public affairs through their servants chosen by them for those objects. It is a government for the people, inasmuch as public offices are instituted and charged with certain functions and endowed with certain powers to be administered solely for the service and benefit of the people, and for no other purpose. These are the vital requirements of democratic government. In the same measure as these requirements fail to be fulfilledas any element of sovereignty passes away from the people, or as the making of the laws and the conduct of public affairs cease to be controlled by the people's will, or as the administration of the public offices is diverted from the purposes for which they have been institutedthat is to say, as the offices are used to serve ends other than the public benefit, or are entrusted to persons not apt to give to the people the best attainable servicein that measure democratic government fails.

It is said that democratic government is practically government through political parties. This can be true only in a limited sense. If political parties are what they ought to beorganizations of citizens caused by different currents of opinion as to principles of government or certain questions of public policy, and set on foot and put to the work of persuasion for the purpose of making this or that set of opinions prevail in the conduct of public affairsthey serve a legitimate end. But whenever they seek to divert the public offices, instituted solely for the service and benefit of the people, from their true purpose in order to use them for their own service and benefit, to this extent turning the government through political parties into a government for political parties, they strike at one of the vital principles of democratic government. And in the same measure as they succeed in this, democratic government fails to be government for the people.

THE DANGER OF A MONARCHY.

The appearance among us of American men and women who have fallen in love with the splendor of monarchical courts, and who also please themselves by imaginative imitations of aristocratic society, has from time to time called forth ingenious speculation as to whether the great democracy of the American Republic will not eventually be turned into a monarchy. I am convinced that, if there be any such danger at all in store for us, it will not come from such coteries of weak minds and impotent ambitions; but it might arise either from a failure of democratic government to afford the necessary protection to individual rights, to property, to public order and safety, so that society would turn for that protection to a strong man, or from democratic government becoming an instrument of private cupidity and falling into the hands of the chief of an organization looking for plunder.

There has actually been such a monarchy on a small scale in existence among us. I have seen it in operation, and so have many of my hearers. We have witnessed in the greatest city of the United States one man wielding the powers of municipal government like a monarch, in some respects like an absolute monarch, too. Standing at the head of a pretended political organization ruled by him with autocratic power, he made appointments and dismissals in the public service of the city by merely issuing his orders. He determined what candidates for office should within his dominion be submitted to the popular vote, and his followers with prompt obedience enforced his pleasure. He gave audience to citizens having business with the municipal government, and either granted or refused their petitions like a sovereign. He ordered his agents in the Legislature of the State to pass this bill or to defeat the other bill, and it was done. Citizens became accustomed to approach him as supplicants approach a king. Aside from the public taxes for his municipal government he levied a separate revenue, the payment of which could not be refused without dangera sort of civil list, partly under the euphonious title of campaign funds, partly without any euphonyfor the use of which he never thought of accounting. He grew rich in a marvelously short time, and when a popular uprising against his rule broke out which threatened to become too formidable to resist, he abdicated and withdrew to his estates.