Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-08-01
OFFICE SEEKING IN WASHINGTON
NOn.Partisan Competitive Exami.
nations To Bring About PO-
litical EefOrm.

AAtAOaA
An editorial in the August Centurg,
with the above title, after abiding to the
spectacle of office-seeking presented in
Washington, continues: "No matter how
high the purpose which may be conceded
as animating the President and his adj
visers, no matter how sincere their de-
termination may be to choose only fit
men for office, and to give the country an
honest, enconomical and business-like adj
ministration, the system under which
they are compelled to act is in its essence,
in its methods and results, the old, hate
full, condemned system of spoils. Their
aims are thwarted by the methods of Sc
lection imposed upon them. As a rational,
practical, business-like means of select
ing our public servants, the present sys-
tenn has utterly broken down. To quote
Jefferson's phrase, 1T keeps in constant
excitement all the hungry cormorants for
office; it demoralizes the public service,
and aside from all considerations of prin-
ciple, it imposes on the President and
the other appointing officers task whose
proper performance is beyond human
capacity. 1t is task, too, which has
never been attempted before. 1t is
twenty-four years since there was q
change in the party controlling the ex-
ecutive branch of the government. In
that time the public service has grown
five-fold in numbers and twenty-fold in
intricacy and importance. Methods of
appointment which were merely annoying
and difficult quarter of a century ago,
are quite impracticable now.
Happily the civil service law and regu-
lations, by providing just and infieX-
ible method of selection, have taken a
large part OF the subordinate places out
of the operations of this wretched sys-
tenn. The holders of these places, so
long as they are honest and efficient, are
permitted to go on with their daily duties
undisturbed by the scramble of the Office
seekers. There is no incentive to get
them out by cooked-up charges or par
tisan pressure for access to their places
can be gained only through the gateway
of impartial competitive examinations.
At the same time the power of removal
is not restricted, and the civil-service
rules furnish no protection to dishonest
or inefficient clerk. Such vacancies as
occur are filled in a quiet, orderly way
through the Civil Service Commission, or
if not required to be filled, remain vacant,
and the salaries are saved to the peo-
pie. In the treasury alone, more than
sixty vacancies occurring under the
present Administration remain untitled,
and more are likely to be added to them
before the force of the department is
brought down to a working basis. But
for the civil-service rules these places
would have been instantly filled with
eager partisans, and every pretext which
or partisanship could invent
to make more vacancies would have been
made use of. Indeed, it is impossible to
picture how greatly the outside pressure
and the inside decentralization would
have been multiplied, had the places now
protected by the civil-service act been
thrown into the pool for whose prizes the
are struggling.
"The obvious remedy is to extend the
system of impartial selection to all places
except those by which the policy of the
is shaped. But before
this can be done, there must be rooted
out of the public mind the notion that any
public place can properly be bestowed as
the reward of partisan service. The
great administrative offices must be filled
by adherents of the dominant party, not
to reward them for their services to the
party, but that the will of the majority of
the people, as expressed at the polls, may
be executed. But, in any broad public
view, it is a matter of utter Indifference
the men who fill the minor
clerical, and laboring places
belong to one party or the other. There
is no difference in principle between the
required of civil officers and those
performed by officers of the army and
navy All that is required in either case
is honesty, capacity, and trained obedi-
ence to the Constitution, the laws, and
the lawful orders of their superiors. The
] effersonian test covers the whole ground:
is he honest, is he capable, is he faithful
to the Constitution
"The chief obstacle to the extension OF
the merit system is the fact that for TWEEN
tv-four years the public offices have been
by one political party. 1t
was to be expected that the opposition
party on coming into power should wish
70 fill at least a part of those places with
IFS own adherents. But it is plain that
some check must be placed on the graft
fication of this wish, If we are to get any
efficient work in the line of 'retrenchment
and reform out of the present Admins
tration. After the division of the public
Offices between the two parties had been
in some degree equalized, there will be
the best opportunity that has ever .oc-
Cured of putting the whole public service,
from high to low, the lew great admins
trative offices alone excepted, on per-
manent non-partisan footing. To accom-
plish this, the lower grade in every branch
of the service must be thrown open to I'M
partial but searching competitive eXamin-
atoms. and all of the higher places, mp to
the very top, must be filled by the pro-
motion of meritorious subordinates. This
is the natural, logical, and, as We believe,
inevitable outcome of the civil-service re-
form movement. Whether this goal can
be reached in one administration remains
to be seen; but when it is reached, one
of the greatest political revolutions that
this country has ever seen will have been
accomplished. Our elections will then
no longer be mere scrambles for the
spoils of office, but, what our theory OF
government intends they shall he, pure
contests of principle"
WHEN the Chattanooga Cadets visited
Dalton, Ga, one of the gayly-caparlsoned
Young warriors sat down on the umbrella