Chapter LXXVI: Book III: Great Speeches on Great Issues (27)

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident, in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death—and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood’s friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood’s day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation’s love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin’s bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on its far sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.

AFTER THE ORATION.

The eulogy was concluded at 1.50, having taken just an hour and a half in its delivery. As Mr. Blaine gave utterance to the last solemn words the spectators broke into a storm of applause, which was not hushed for some moments. The address was listened to with an intense interest and in solemn silence, unbroken by any sound except by a sigh of relief (such as arises from a large audience when a strong tension is removed from their minds) when the orator passed from his allusion to differences existing in the Republican party last spring. Benediction was then offered by the Rev. Dr. Bullock, Chaplain of the Senate. The Marine Band played the “Garfield Dead March” as the invited guests filed out of the Chamber in the same order in which they had entered it. The Senate was the last to leave, and then the House was called to order by the Speaker.

Mr. McKinley, of Ohio, offered the following resolution:

_Resolved_, The Senate concurring, that the thanks of Congress are hereby presented to the Hon. James G. Blaine for the appropriate memorial address delivered by him on the life and services of James A. Garfield, late President of the United States, in the Representative Hall, before both houses of Congress and their invited guests, on the 27th of February, 1882, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication.

_Resolved_, That the Chairman of the Joint Committee appointed to make the necessary arrangements to carry into effect the resolution of Congress in relation to the memorial exercises in honor of James A. Garfield be requested to communicate to Mr. Blaine the foregoing resolution, receive his answer thereto and present the same to both Houses of Congress. The resolution was adopted unanimously.

Mr. McKinley then offered the following:

_Resolved_, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the deceased President of the United States the House do now adjourn.

The resolution was unanimously adopted, and in accordance therewith the Speaker at 1.55 declared the House adjourned until to-morrow.

CIVIL SERVICE.

Improvement of the Subordinate Civil Service.

_Speech of Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, in the Senate of the
United States, Tuesday, December 12, 1882._

On the bill (S. 133) to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States.

MR. PENDLETON said:

MR. PRESIDENT: When I assented yesterday that this bill should be informally laid aside without losing its place, I had no set speech to deliver, nor had I the intention of preparing a speech for to-day. I did not intend to hold up the bill here as an obstruction to any business before the Senate, or as an aid in passing any measure that might receive my approbation, as my good Friend, the Senator from Kansas [Mr. PLUMB], so politely intimated. The bill providing for a bankrupt law was very speedily, and to me unexpectedly, disposed of yesterday, and this bill was called up several hours earlier than I supposed it would be, and I thought the convenience of the Senate as well as of myself would be subserved if I had an opportunity to condense what I had to say on the subject.

The necessity of a change in the civil administration of this government has been so fully discussed in the periodicals and pamphlets and newspapers, and before the people, that I feel indisposed to make any further argument. This subject, in all its ramifications, was submitted to the people of the United States at the fall elections, and they have spoken in no low or uncertain tone.

I do not doubt that the local questions exerted great influence in many States upon the result; but it is my conviction, founded on the observation of an active participation in the canvass in Ohio, that dissatisfaction with the methods of administration adopted by the Republican party in the past few years was the most important single factor in reaching the conclusion that was attained. I do not say that the civil service of the Government is wholly bad. I can not honestly do so. I do not say that the men who are employed in it are all corrupt or inefficient or unworthy. That would do a very great injustice to a great number of faithful, honest, and intelligent public servants. But I do say that the civil service is inefficient; that it is expensive; that it is extravagant; that it is in many cases and in some senses corrupt; that it has welded the whole body of its employès into a great political machine; that it has converted them into an army of officers and men, veterans in political warfare, disciplined and trained, whose salaries, whose time, whose exertions at least twice within a very short period in the history of our country have robbed the people of the fair results of Presidential elections.

I repeat, Mr. President, that the civil service is inefficient, expensive, and extravagant and that it is in many instances corrupt. Is it necessary for me to prove facts which are so patent that even the blind must see and the deaf must hear?

At the last session of Congress, in open Senate, it was stated and proven that in the Treasury Department at Washington there were 3,400 employès, and that of this number the employment of less than 1,600 was authorized by law and appropriations made for their payment, and that more than 1,700 were put on or off the rolls of the Department at the will and pleasure of the Secretary of the Treasury, and paid not out of appropriations made for that purpose but out of various funds and balances of appropriation lapsed in the Treasury in one shape or another, which are not by law appropriated to the payment of these employès. I was amazed. I had never before heard that such a state of affairs existed. I did not believe that it was possible until my honorable colleague rose in his place and admitted the general truth of the statement and defended the system as being necessary for the proper administration of the Treasury Department.

Mr. President, we see in this statement whence comes that immense body of public officials, inspectors, detectives, deputies, examiners, from the Treasury Department who have for years past been sent over the States for the purpose of managing Presidential conventions and securing Presidential elections at the public expense.

I hold in my hand a statement made before the committee which reported this bill, showing that in one of the divisions of the Treasury Department at Washington where more than nine hundred persons were employed, men and women, five hundred and more of them were entirely useless, and were discharged without in any degree affecting the efficiency of the bureau. I read from the testimony taken before the committee. Every gentleman can find it if he has not it already on his table. The statement to which I refer I read from page 121 of report of committee No. 576:

The extravagance of the present system was well shown in the
examination of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing by a committee of
which I was chairman. Of a force of nine hundred and fifty-eight
persons five hundred and thirty-nine, with annual salaries amounting
to $390,000, were found to be superfluous and were discharged. The
committee reported that for years the force in some branches had been
twice and even three times as great as the work required. In one
division—

I beg Senators to listen to this—

In one division a sort of platform had been built underneath the iron
roof, about seven feet above the floor, to accommodate the surplus
counters. It appeared that the room was of ample size without this
contrivance for all persons really needed. In another division were
found twenty messengers doing work which it was found could be done by
one. The committee reported that the system of patronage was chiefly
responsible for the extravagance and irregularities which had marked
the administration of the bureau, and declared that it had cost the
people millions of dollars in that branch of the service alone. Under
this system the office had been made to subserve the purpose of an
almshouse or asylum.

In consequence of this report the annual appropriation for the
Printing Bureau was reduced from $800,000 to $200,000, and out of the
first year’s savings was built the fine building now occupied by that
bureau.

And again, on page 126, this same gentleman says:

My observation teaches me there is more pressure and importunity for
these places—

That is, the $900 clerkship—

and that more time is consumed by heads of Departments, and those
having the appointing power, in listening to applications for that
grade than for all the other places in the Departments combined; and
that when it is discretionary with a Department to appoint a man or a
woman the choice is usually exercised in favor of the woman. I know a
recent case in the Treasury Department where a vacancy occurred which
the head of the bureau deemed it important to fill with a man. It was
a position where a man’s services were almost indispensable; but the
importunity was so great that he was compelled to accept a woman,
although her services were not required. In consequence of this
importunity for places for women a practice has grown up in the
Treasury Department of allowing the salaries of the higher grades of
clerkships to lapse when vacancies occur, and of dividing up the
amount among clerks, usually women, at lower salaries. In the place of
a male clerk at $1,800 a year, for instance, three women may be
employed at $600. Often the services of a man are required in its
higher grade, while the women are not needed at all; but as the man
can not be employed without discharging the women he can not be had.
The persons employed in this way are said to be “on the lapse.” Out of
this grew the practice known in Departmental language as “anticipating
the lapse.”

In the endeavor to satisfy the pressure for place more people are
appointed on this roll than the salaries then lapsing will warrant, in
the hope that enough more will lapse before the end of the fiscal year
to provide funds for their payment. But the funds almost always run
short before the end of the year, and then either the “lapse”
appointees must be dropped or clerks discharged from the regular roll
to make place for them. In some instances, in former administrations,
the employès on the regular roll were compelled, under terror of
dismissal, to ask for leaves of absence, without pay, for a sufficient
time to make up the deficiency caused by the appointment of
unnecessary employès “on the lapse”. Another bad feature is that these
“lapse” employès being appointed without regard to the necessities of
the work, for short periods and usually without regard to their
qualifications, are of little service, while their employment prevents
the filling of vacancies on the regular roll and demoralizes the
service.

In one case thirty-five persons were put on the “lapse fund” of the
Treasurer’s office for eight days at the end of the fiscal year, to
sop up some money which was in danger of being saved and returned to
the Treasury.

MR. MAXEY. Do I understand the Senator to say that that testimony was taken by the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment?

MR. PENDLETON. Yes sir. This testimony was taken in the month of March, I think, of the present year.

Says this gentleman further—

I have no doubt that under a rigid application of this proposed system
the work of the Treasury Department could be performed with two-thirds
the number of clerks now employed, and that is a moderate estimate of
the saving.

Mr. President, a Senator who is now present in the Chamber and who will recognize the statement when I make it, though I shall not indicate his name, told me that the Secretary of one of the Departments of the Government said to him, perhaps to the Committee on Appropriations, at the last session, that there were seventeen clerks in his Department for whom he could find no employment; that he did need one competent clerk of a higher grade, and if the appropriation were made for that one clerk, at the proper amount according to the gradations of the service and the appropriation for the seventeen were left out, he could, without impairing the efficiency of his Department, leave those seventeen clerks off the roll; but if the appropriation should be made the personal, social, and political pressure was so great that he would be obliged to employ and pay them, though he could find no employment for them.

Need I prove, Mr. President, that which is known to all men, that a systematic pressure has been brought upon the clerks in the Departments of the Government this year to extort from them a portion of their salary under a system which the President himself scouts as being voluntary, and that they are led to believe and fairly led to believe that they have bought and paid for the offices which they hold and that the good faith of those who take from them a portion of the salary is pledged to their retention in their positions?

I have said before upon the floor of the Senate that this whole system demoralizes everybody who is engaged in it. It demoralizes the clerks who are appointed. That is inevitable. It demoralizes those who make the appointment. That also is inevitable. And it demoralizes Senators and Representatives who by the exercise of their power as Senators and Representatives exert pressure upon the appointing power.

I repeat that this system, permeating the whole civil service of the country, demoralizes everybody connected with it, the clerks, the appointing power, and those who by their official position and their relations to the executive administration of the Government have the influence necessary to put these clerks in office.

Mr. President, how can you expect purity, economy, efficiency to be found anywhere in the service of the Government if the report made by this committee to the Senate has even the semblance of truth? If the civil service of the country is to be filled up with superfluous persons, if salaries are to be increased in order that assessments may be paid, if members of Congress having friends or partisan supporters are to be able to make places for them in public employment, how can you expect Senators and Representatives to be economical and careful in the administration of the public money?

I am sure there is no Senator here who will forget a scene which we had upon the last night session of the last session, when the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Allison], the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the official leader of the Senate, rising in his place with the last appropriation bill in his hand, and the report of the committee of conference, made a statement to the Senate of the result of the appropriations. He stated that the appropriations that were made during that session amounted to $292,000,000—I throw off the fractions—and he felicitated the Senate and himself as the organ and mouthpiece of his party, that this was an excess of only $77,000,000 over and above the expenditures of the year before. Instantly the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Platt] rose in his place and reminded the Senator that there would be a deficiency in the Pension Bureau alone of $20,000,000 or $25,000,000. The honorable Senator from Georgia, who now occupies the chair [Mr. Brown], inquired of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations whether there would be any deficiencies in the expenses of the current year, or whether the statement was supposed to cover probable deficiencies in addition to the appropriations, and the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BECK], certainly as familiar with all these subjects as any member of this body, rose in his place and said that notwithstanding the utmost scrutiny of the Committee on Appropriations, undoubtedly at the end of the fiscal year the ordinary deficiencies would be found.

Two hundred and ninety-two millions of dollars of regular appropriations; $20,000,000 of deficiency in one bureau alone, the usual deficiencies occurring during the course of the year of $20,000,000 more! As if this were not enough, my honorable colleague arose in his place and took up the tale and called attention to the fact that the permanent appropriations amounted annually to one hundred and thirty-seven or more millions of dollars. According to his statement made in that speech, which I am sure nobody will forget, the expenditures of the Government during this present fiscal year would amount to $402,000,000 or $403,000,000—nearly $9 a head for every man, woman, and child in the United States—more money than was appropriated for all the expenses of the Government during the first forty years of its existence, I will venture to say, though I do not speak by the book.

Harbor and river appropriation bills of $18,000,000! Thirty-two new buildings commenced in the States, almost every one of which has had buildings before! Two million five hundred thousand dollars appropriated for the commencement of those buildings, for laying the foundation! Before they are finished $25,000,000 more will be needed to complete them! While these enormous appropriations were being made there came up from the country a demand for a revision of the tariff, which was confessedly greatly needed; for a revision of the internal-revenue laws, which was equally necessary; for a reduction of taxation pressing so heavily upon all the interests of the country. Our honorable friends upon the other side of the Chamber chose to answer that demand by a bill repealing the taxes upon perfumery and cosmetics and bank checks, and met with a sneer of derision and ridicule every effort that was made on this side of the Chamber for a reduction of taxation.

Mr. President, it was these methods of administration, it was these acts of the Republican party, which made it possible for the Democratic party, and other men who prized their country higher than they did their party, to elect in Ohio a Democratic ticket by eighteen or twenty thousand majority, and elect sixteen out of the twenty-one members of Congress assigned to that State. I say elected sixteen, perfectly conscious of the fact that thirteen of them only have received their certificates at present. If three of them, against whom the aggregate majority is only sixty votes, do not receive certificates under the action of the returning board or under the powers of our judiciary which have been invoked, they will be seated, as they ought to be, at the beginning of the next session of Congress in the other house.

Under the impulse of this election in Ohio, upon these facts and influences which I have stated as being of great importance there, it became possible for the Democratic party and its allies, whom I have described, to elect a Democratic governor in New York, in Massachusetts, in Kansas, in Michigan, and various other States in which there has been none but a Republican governor for many years past. The same influences enable us, having accessions to our ranks from Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, to have at the beginning of the next session of Congress an aggregate of perhaps sixty or more Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

MR. HALE. Will the Senator from Ohio let me ask him a question right here? As he is confining himself very closely to the civil service of the Government, I should like to ask him one question here relating to that. He has appealed directly to the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, who was not present at the time, although he has just come in. The Senator from Ohio has alluded to the remarkable speech made by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations upon the expenditures of the Government at the last session, and the wonderful scene that was exhibited there at that time. In that speech on the expenditures of the Government, by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, was the admission that the aggregate expenditures were seventy-odd millions of dollars more than the year before—remarkable when in that speech of the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, he showed that every dollar was accounted for by deficiencies on the part of the previous Democratic Congress and by the increase of pensions and some other matters.

MR. PENDLETON. I remember the speech of the Senator from Iowa very well; I have quoted it repeatedly from the RECORD, in which I found it. I did him no injustice; I know he will not believe I would intentionally do him injustice at any time. I stated then, I stated a moment ago, I have stated it on the stump, I repeat it now, that the Senator from Iowa in that speech said that the appropriations for the current year were $292,000,000, and that they were $77,000,000 in excess of those made for the last year: and I might have added if I chose to make it a partisan affair, that the last Congress was under Democratic control.

MR. HALE. And did he not account for every dollar of that $77,000,000 increase? But I think I will leave it to him, as he is present now.

MR. PENDLETON. Undoubtedly he accounted for it, for he gave all the items that went to make up the $77,000,000.

I am confining myself more closely, Mr. President, to the discussion of the reform of the civil service of the Government than the Senator seems to apprehend. I was showing to him the causes of this very remarkable revolution in public sentiment which we have seen as exhibited by the last election. I attributed that result in great measure to the defects in our civil-service system and to the demoralization which, arising there and in its practices, has reached the other departments of the Government.

Mr. President, I was about to say when the Senator from Maine interrupted me that I begged gentlemen on this side of the Chamber and I beg the Democratic party throughout the country not to mistake this result of last fall as a purely Democratic triumph. It was achieved by the Democratic party with the assistance of men of all parties upon whom their love of country sat heavier than their love of party. It was a protest made by an awakened people who were indignant at the wrongs which had been practiced upon them. It was a tentative stretching out of that same people to find instrumentalities by which those wrongs could be righted.

The people demanded economy and the Republican party gave them extravagance. The people demanded a reduction of taxation and the Republican party gave them an increase of expenditure. The people demanded purity of administration and the Republican party revelled in profligacy; and when the Republican party came to put themselves on trial before that same people the people gave them a day of calamity.

I beg that my colleagues on this side of the Chamber may remember, I desire that our party associates throughout the country shall remember, that the people will continue to us their confidence and increase it, that they will continue to us power and increase it, just in the proportion that we honestly and fairly and promptly answer to the demands which the people have made, and which were thus responded to by the Republican party. They asked revenue reform and they received none. They asked civil-service reform and they obtained none. They asked that the civil service of this Government should not either as to its men or its expenditures be made the basis upon which political contests were to be carried on, and they received for answer that that was an old fashion and a good method of political warfare.

I beg gentlemen upon this side of the Chamber to remember that if they desire to escape the fate which now seems to be impending over their adversaries they must avoid the example which those adversaries have set them.

Mr. President the bill which I have the honor to advocate to-day, and which is reported by a committee of the Senate, is the commencement, in my humble judgment, of an attempt to answer one of the demands which the people have authoritatively made. I speak advisedly. It is the commencement of an attempt to organize a system which shall respond to one of the demands which the people have made.

I suppose the most enthusiastic supporter of this bill will not pretend that it is perfect. I suppose he will not pretend that upon the adoption of this bill a system will immediately spring into life which will perfect and purify the civil service of the Government. But it is the commencement of an attempt to lay the foundations of a system which, if it shall answer in any reasonable degree the expectation of those who by experience and faithful study have framed it, it will in the end correct the abuses to which I have alluded, and which have been delineated by no enemy of the Republican party or of the Administration in the report which I have read to the Senate.

The bill has for its foundation the simple and single idea that the offices of the Government are trusts for the people; that the performance of the duties of those offices is to be in the interests of the people; that there is no excuse for the being of one office or the paying of one salary except that it is in the highest practicable degree necessary for the welfare of the people; that every superfluous office-holder should be cut off; that every incompetent office-holder should be dismissed; that the employment of two where one will suffice is robbery; that salaries so large that they can submit to the extortion, the forced payment of 2 or 10 per cent. are excessive and ought to be diminished. I am not speaking of purely voluntary contributions.

If it be true that offices are trusts for the people, then it is also true that the offices should be filled by those who can perform and discharge the duties in the best possible way. Fidelity, capacity, honesty, were the tests established by Mr. Jefferson when he assumed the reins of government in 1801. He said then, and said truly, that these elements in the public offices of the Government were necessary to an honest civil service, and that an honest civil service was essential to the purity and efficiency of administration, necessary to the preservation of republican institutions.

Mr. Jefferson was right. The experience of eighty years has shown it. The man best fitted should be the man placed in office, especially if the appointment is made by the servants of the people. It is as true as truth can be that fidelity, capacity, honesty, are essential elements of fitness, and that the man who is most capable and most faithful and most honest is the man who is the most fit, and he should be appointed to office.

These are truths that in their statement will be denied by none, and yet the best means of ascertaining that fitness has been a vexed question with every Administration of this Government and with every man who has been charged with the responsibility of its execution. We know what is the result. Pass examinations have been tried; professions have been tried; honest endeavors have been tried; a disposition to live faithfully up to these requirements has been tried; and yet we know and the experience of to-day shows it, that they have all made a most lamentable failure. We do now know that so great has been the increase of the powers of this Government and the number of officers under it that no President, no Cabinet, no heads of bureaus, can by possibility know the fitness of all applicants for the subordinate offices of the Government. The result has been, and under the existing system it must always be, that the President and his Cabinet and those who are charged with the responsibility have remitted the question of fitness to their own partisan friends, and those partisan friends have in their turn decided the question of fitness in favor of their partisan friends. The Administration has need of the support of members of Congress in carrying on its work. It therefore remits to members of Congress of its own party the questions of appointment to office in the various districts. These gentlemen, in the course of their political life, naturally (I do not find fault with them for it) find themselves under strain and pressure to secure a nomination or a re-nomination or election, and they use the places to reward those whose friends and families and connections and aids and deputies will serve their purpose.

I put it to gentlemen, particularly to my friends on this side of the Chamber, because you have not the opportunity to exercise this patronage as much as our friends on the other side, whether or not the element of fitness enters largely into the questions of appointment in your respective districts and States. It can not be. The necessities of the case prevent it. The pressure upon men who want to be elected prevents it. The demands that are made by partisan friends and those who have been influential and potent in securing personal triumph to gentlemen who may happen to be in such relation to the appointing power that they have the influence to secure appointment prevent it. The result is as I have stated, that instead of making fitness, capacity, honesty, fidelity the only or the essential qualifications for office, personal fidelity and partisan activity alone control.

When I came to the Senate I had occasion more than ever before to make some investigation upon the subject, and found to my surprise the extent to which the demoralization of the service had gone. I saw the civil service debauched and demoralized. I saw offices distributed to incompetent and unworthy men as a reward for the lowest of dirty partisan work. I saw many men employed to do the work of one man. I saw the money of the people shamefully wasted to keep up electioneering funds by political assessments on salaries. I saw the whole body of the public officers paid by the people organized into a compact, disciplined corps of electioneerers obeying a master as if they were eating the bread of his dependence and rendering him personal service. I saw these evils were fostered, encouraged, stimulated very largely by Senators and Representatives. They had their friends who lent them a helping hand; and regardless of the fitness of these friends, of the necessity of their employment, they insisted on the appointment and had the power, which on consideration, was found sufficient to secure it.

I believed then, and I believe now, that the existing system which, for want of a better name, I call the “spoils system,” must be killed or it will kill the Republic. I believe that it is impossible to maintain free institutions in the country upon any basis of that sort. I am no prophet of evil, I am not a pessimist in any sense of the word, but I do believe that if the present system goes on until 50,000,000 people shall have grown into 100,000,000, and 140,000 officers shall have grown into 300,000, with their compensation in proportion, and all shall depend upon the accession of one party or the other to the Presidency and to the executive functions, the Presidency of the country, if it shall last in name so long, will be put up for sale to the highest bidder even as in Rome the imperial crown was put to those who could raise the largest fund.

I beg gentlemen to believe that whatever I may have said as to the relations of parties I do not approach the question of the reform of the civil service in any mere partisan spirit. It was because I thought I saw this danger, because I believed that it was imminent, because I believed then as I do now that it is destructive of republicanism and will end in the downfall of republican government, that I felt it my duty to devote whatever ability I had to the consideration of this subject. It was that which induced me a year or two ago to introduce a bill which after the best reflection, the best study, the best assistance that I could get I did introduce in the Senate, and which in some degree modified, has come back from the Committee on Civil Service Reform, and is now pending before this body.

The purpose of this bill is merely to secure the application of the Jeffersonian tests, fidelity, honesty, capacity. The methods are those which are known and familiar to us all in the various avocations of life—competition, comparison. Perhaps the bill is imperfect. If so, I am sure I express the wish of every member of the committee that it may be improved. There is no pride of opinion, there is no determination, if suggestions of value are made not promptly to adopt them. There is no disposition to do aught except to perfect, and in the best possible way, this bill, the sole object of which is to improve this great department of our Government.

Mr. President, it is because I believe the “spoils system” to be a great crime, because I believe it to be fraught with danger, because I believe that the highest duty of patriotism is to prevent the crime and to avoid the danger, that I advocate this or a better bill if it can be found for the improvement of the civil service.

I shall say in passing that I find it no objection to this bill at all that while I believe it is of great value to the country in all its aspects, I do not believe it will bring disaster to the Democratic party. There has been great misapprehension as to the methods and the scope of the bill. I desire the attention of the Senators while I briefly state them. I see I have spoken a good deal longer than I intended. The bill simply applies to the Executive Departments of the Government here in Washington and to those offices throughout the country, post-offices and custom-houses, which employ more than fifty persons. I am told, and I am sure that I am not far out of the way, if I am not exactly accurate, that the number of such offices does not exceed thirty or perhaps thirty-five, and that the number of persons who are employed in them, together with those in the Departments here, will not exceed 10,000.

I said that this was a tentative effort; that it was intended to be an experiment, and it is because it is tentative, because it is intended to be an experiment, that the committee thought it advisable in its initial stages to limit it, as they have limited it, in the bill. The bill does not apply to elective officers, of course, nor to officers appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, nor to the military, nor to the naval, nor to the judicial establishment. It applies simply now to those officials who are employed in the Departments here and in the large offices of the Government elsewhere, first, because as an experiment it was thought that it gave scope enough to test its value and labor enough to employ all those who are engaged in putting it in operation until its merits shall be fairly tried and it shall commend itself either to the approval or condemnation of the American people.

There was another reason. The heads of offices and bureaus, where the number of employès is small, can themselves personally judge of the fitness of persons who are applicants for appointment, knowing as they do more or less in their narrow communities their antecedents, their habits, and their modes of life.

The bill does not touch the question of tenure of office or of removal from office. I see it stated by those who do not know that it provides for a seven years’ tenure of office. There is nothing like it in the bill. I see it stated that it provides against removals from office. There is nothing like it in the bill. Whether or not it would be advisable to fix the tenure of office, whether or not it would be advisable to limit removals are questions about which men will differ; but the bill as it is and as we invoke the judgment of the Senate upon it contains no provisions either as to tenure of office or removals from office. It leaves those questions exactly where the law now finds them. It concerns itself only with admission to the public service; it concerns itself only with discovering in certain proper ways or in certain ways—gentlemen may differ as to whether they are proper or not—the fitness of the persons who shall be appointed. It takes cognizance of the fact that it is impossible for the head of a Department or a large office personally to know all the applicants, and therefore it provides a method by which, when a vacancy occurs by death, by resignation, by the unlimited power of removal, a suitable person may be designated to fill the vacancy. It says in effect that when a vacancy occurs in the civil service everybody who desires entrance shall have the right to apply. Everybody, humble, poor, without patronage, without influence, whatever may be his condition in life, shall have the right to go before the parties charged with an examination of his fitness and there be subjected to the test of open, regulated, fair, impartial examination.

MR. MAXEY. If it is agreeable I should like to interrupt the Senator to ask a question upon that point. In the plan suggested for examination as to fitness is it to be a competitive examination by the bill? I ask the Senator if the committee has fallen upon any plan as to the line of inquiry that should be instituted in that examination, and if so will he indicate it? That I think is an important consideration.

MR. PENDLETON. I am glad that the Senator has asked that question, for it gives me an opportunity of saying to him and to the Senate that if they will examine the report made by the committee, they will find that this system is not entirely new, but that to a very large extent in certain offices in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Boston it has been put into practical operation under the heads of the offices there, and that they have devised, with the assistance of the commission originally appointed by General Grant, but largely upon their own motion, a system which I suppose would, to some extent, be followed under this bill.

MR. MAXEY. What I desire to know is whether the committee, after examining the various lines of questions asked in the competitive examinations, have themselves fallen upon any plan which they could recommend to the Senate as a proper plan for examination?

MR. PENDLETON. No; the committee have not carried their investigations to that point for the simple reason that it would be impracticable for a committee of the Senate charged with the examination of the general subject to look into the proper examinations as to every Department of the Government and every department in that Department. For instance, for a letter-carrier one series of examinations might be very proper, for an assayer another system of examination, for an accountant still other examinations, for a weigher and gauger still another. The examinations must be adapted to the particular offices which it is sought to fill, and that can only be by the leisurely and competent investigation of gentlemen who are charged as an official duty with the determination of what the needs of all the Departments and offices require.

MR. MAXEY. That may be quite a reasonable view of the case; but some of the questions which I have seen submitted I am of the opinion have nothing whatever to do with the examination for a mere clerkship, but would have something to do perhaps with an examination in a college or something of that sort.

MR. PENDLETON. The examinations are to be regulated in relation to the particular offices to be filled. I am not the advocate of any special system of questions which has been devised. I am not the apologist for any error which may have been committed. I am not prepared to say that I have seen any of these series of questions which might not admit of improvement.

MR. MAXEY. I will state to the Senator that the suggestion he has himself made is about the best that I have heard. A great many of the questions which have been submitted I think are nonsensical to be put to an applicant for a minor clerkship.

MR. PENDLETON. I shall offer some amendments in behalf of the committee and in behalf of myself before we reach a vote. The details of the bill are these: The preamble expresses fully the philosophy of the bill. Read it carefully. It sets forth what common justice demands for the citizen and for the Government. It sets forth what the economy, efficiency, and integrity of the public service demand.

WHEREAS COMMON JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT, SO FAR AS PRACTICABLE, ALL CITIZENS DULY QUALIFIED SHALL BE ALLOWED EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES, ON GROUNDS OF PERSONAL FITNESS, FOR SECURING APPOINTMENTS, EMPLOYMENT, AND PROMOTION IN THE SUBORDINATE CIVIL SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES; AND

WHEREAS JUSTICE TO THE PUBLIC LIKEWISE REQUIRES THAT THE GOVERNMENT SHALL HAVE THE LARGEST CHOICE AMONG THOSE LIKELY TO ANSWER THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE: AND

WHEREAS JUSTICE, AS WELL AS ECONOMY, EFFICIENCY, AND INTEGRITY IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE WILL BE PROMOTED BY SUBSTITUTING OPEN AND UNIFORM COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS FOR THE EXAMINATIONS HERETOFORE HELD IN PURSUANCE OF THE STATUTES OF 1853 AND 1855.