The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-03-02
THE HANKER FOR sPoILs.

THE HANKER FOR SPOILS.
| During the campaign of last year
enc of the things over which the oppo-
nents OF Mr.. Bryan used to become
virtuously indignant was the plank in
! the Chicago platform that declared
/ against life tenure in public office. Lam
! guage was totally inadequate to tell
the horror these people felt whenever
| they thought of that plank In visions
bright they saw the government turned
upside down while a very saturnalia
of sDoils and wreck and ruin was be-
ing held. In what they said against
the plank they were prompted by moth
ing but the purest motives of patriot
ism; in fact, they wouldn't permit
themselves to be prompted by any but
patriotic motives, and were any others
TO even intimate that they would be
pleased to have an opportunity to do a
little prompting, they would have been
told: Get thee behind me, Satan"
And Satan, knowing the source of the
command, would Immediately have
gotten behind him and abided his time.
His time is now, if the terrific on
slaught on civil service reform made by
General Grosvenor may be relied upon
as an indicator of the purpose of the
Republican party so far as regards
civil service reform is concerned. He
characterizes the law whose object is
to further that reform as a "conspir-
acy," which has proved the greatest
power of the spokesman, a law Ito
pension incompetents," and hum
bug" What Grosvenor says doesn't
have so much weight now that Nc
Kinlev is elected and he has ceased to
be the official head of the Republican
campaign bureau of statistics. But his
sentiments are finding an echo in his
party, an echo that is fast developing
into a tremendous roar For example,
the San Francisco Chronicle says that
when Mr.. Cleveland first ran for presi-
dent the policy of rotation in office,
which Democratic leaders from Jeffer-
son to Tilden had practiced and ex-
tolIed in national and state affairs, and
which Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S.
Grant had faithfully sustained, was
still practiced. 1t goes on to say that
under this policy there had been fos-
tered an administrative system which
new states coming into the Union
found meritorious enough to adopt, and
which was copied or initiated abroad.
The advantages of the rotation policy,
as experience went to show, were those
which justify frequent changes of per-
sonnet in private employ. There were
gains due to new blood, new vigor and
new ambition. There was also the
admonitory knowledge that if anything
went wrong the party interest would
unite with considerations of public well
fare to punish the offender. Then an
officeholder always had before him the
prospect that, when his term expired,
a political rival or enemy would be
pretty sure to get his job and turn a
searchlight upon his business methods,
and he was watchful of his conduct.
A clerk knew that if he failed of duty
or abused his powers, his superior
could turn him out with NJ interme-
date necessity of asking the consent of
board OF examiners. Naturally
enough all these things tended to make
the civil service efficient, honest and
economical.
The Chronicle then proceeds to tell
how the craze for something English
came and how this something took the
form of the civil service reform fad"
as it terms it. 1t doesn't like the sys-
TEN in any respect, and condemns it in
these words:
What has been the general business
result? We deny that it has raised the
efficiency of the public service. We
affirm that it is gradually building UP a
class of privileged people in office who
will in time, become as intolerant of
the ordinary citizen as are the officers
of the army. What is more, we declare
that under so-called civil service re-
form the expenses of national admins
tration have increased in a way
wholly disproportioned to the increase
of population, and are all the time on
the ascending scale. Increased economy |
is the criterion of administrative re /
form; increased expenses mean that |
such reform has failed to prove its
case. And there you have the whole /
story of the rise and decline of a Brit |
ish fad. which should never have had |
American adoption.
All that. stripped of verbiage, is |
simply plea for the Inauguration of |
a grand game of spoils by the incom-
ing administration. 1t may or it may |
not be needed, but there is no question
but there Will be tremendous pres /
sure brought to bear upon President |
Mckinley to induce him to throw civil |
service reform to the dogs 1t is true |
that the Republican platform adopted /
at ST. Louis contained this plank:
THE civil service law was placed on
the statute book by the Republican
party. which has always sustained it,
and we renew our repeated declara-
tions that it shall be thoroughly and
enforced and extended wher-
ever practicable
1t should be remembered that this
was last year, before the Republican
party was returned to power; and also
that there are no birds in last years
nest"
Police commissioners are not un-