The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-06-10

before the meeting of congress is worse
than wasted in interminable strife and
pickering over the civil offices. SO that,
when the legislative branch of the gov
eminent convenes, the executive is
very inadequately prepared for those
important duties upon which, rather
than upon the distribution of patronage,
the true welfare of the nation depends.
The experience through which the
country is passing, this eternal and dis
tracing din and ferment about office,
furnishes all the argument any reason
able being should need for perfecting
and extending the reform of the civil
changes actually made that the evil lies
as in the conversion of the government
into an object of prey; in the fact that
for every prize, even if there should be
" clean sweep" there is mob of
hungry contestants. The people them
selves, directly through these crowds of
applicants and indirectly through their
partisans and opponents, become en-
broiled among themselves and with the
administration in an insensate quarrel,
as bitter and demoralizing as it is fool
ish and destructive. There is equally
as strong reason why every officer in
the military or naval service, from the
lowest subaltern to the general, should
be changed with every administration,
or should be of the same political COM
plexion as the administration, as in the
civil service, and in all there should be
the same permanence of tenure as in
any business corporation. The govern
ment can no more successfully endure
the strain to which it is subjected by
these contests and changes in the civil
service than could a great railway if,
during the first weeks of a new manage
ment, the president and his superin-
tendents of freight and passenger traf-
fic, his mechanical superintendent and
roadmaster, should be compelled to de-
vote their time and energies to making
a clean sweep in the clerical and oper-
ating forces, while the business of the
road was neglected or made subor-
dinate to the work of effecting a sweep,
clean or otherwise. 1t would be a
time when these officials would wish to
devote their energies, untrammeled by
any petty squabbles for the places of
clerks, conductors, station agents, or
trackmen, to studying the needs and re-
quirements of the road, to devising means
to protect it from the encroachments of
rivals and to building up and developing
its business. They would weed out
incompetent officials, secure faithful
and efficient body of servants and aim to
retain them in the service of the COM
pany. They would be guided by the
commonest business principles in pur-
suing such course. No statute would
be necessary. The business interests
of the road would be the principal OBJ
iect of their solicitude and the offices a
subordinate matter, receiving in due
season due and judicious measure of
attention. But the government re-
verses this natural order of things.
When the civil service, by statutory law
and by the enlightenment of the peo-
pie, has been fully reformed, new
national administration will have its
time and energies in the first days of
its existence, when it most needs them,
for the study of the serious questions of
practical craftsmanship, and chickering's
about the offices will no longer so en-
gross the public mind.