Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-01-03
MARE ISLAND AND CIVIL SERVICE RE
FORM


The opponents Of Civil Service reform
in this State have lately been talking a
good deal about the votes of the Govern
ment employees at Mare Island. They say
that several hundred of these persons voted
for Hancock and the Democratic candi-
date for the Legislature, in November,
and they cite this as particularly dis
gushing and conclusive proof that Civil
Service reform is bad thing We should
like these gentlemen to set out By demon.
strating to what extent the principles of
Civil Service reform have ever been ap-
piled in filing appointments at Mare
Island. 1t has been openly charged that
the very men VINO are said to have voted
for Hancock recently were primarily ap-
pointed because of their supposed subserv-
Ionce to well.known politician. We do
not know that this charge has any truth in
it, but ii it has it only shows that the
spoiis system is at the bottom of the Mare
Island situation, and that Civil Service re-
foam never has had any thing to do with that
: 5uation. The doctrine, however, that
Government appointments ought to be
made dependent upon the politics of the
applicant, is hopelessly vicious. Poll.
ticians have become so saturated with the
spoils principle that many of them appear
actually incapable of pereeiving its evils,
but though partisans may exclaim and pro-
test against reform it is none the less
necessary to urge it. There is only one
rational and deefensible mode of conducting
the public service, and that is by applying
business principles to it. Whoever calls
this sentimental" or goody eoody, y
simply betrays lis ignorance of what is
proposed, for the fact is that the spoils
system is based ON sentiment, and that
civil service reform involves a return to
sober practical rules. The Civil Service re-
former asserts that there ought not to be any
essential distinction between the methods
Of conducting public business and the meth
ods of conducting private business; that
efficiency, integrity, industry, ought to be
made thetests of fitness in publicservice,
precisely as they are made the tests of
fitness in private employment that poll
tieians, and especially Congressman, ought
not to be allowed to secure followings for
themselves, and to intrench themselves in
Office, by bestowing appointments for par.
tisan services upon men who are not other.
wise fitted for them; that no party can
be entitled to claim the possession of the
entire civil service as perquisite of
power that politics and the public bust
mass ought to be divorced as completely
as possible that the nation, without dis
tinction of party, has a right to demand
and insist upon this change and that to
oppose it is to set faction above country.
We have never yet seen one of
these positions successfully confuted,
and we do not expect to zee one of them
confuted. On the contrary, we believe
that whoever is capable of reasoning and
will reflect upon them dispassionately.
must become convinced of their soundness
and force. We believe that the people are
arriving at this conviction rapidly, and
that in short time the demand for Civil
Service reform viii become so general and
imperative that the partisans who cannot
recognize any claims but those of faction,
or any means of carrying on politics but
through the corrupt and oorrupting agency
of the spells system, will be compelled to
find better reasons for their obstructive
attitude than they have yet shown, or
sbandon resistance to the reform movement.