where the accused agreed to modify his advertising matter so that He is entitled to I have no sympathy with or respect for the policy that affects The citizen. the important rights of person, reputation, or property by means of confidential reports of secret emissaries of the law. Reports evidence containing evidence respecting the rights of the citizen should against him. always be made public. No consideration of delicacy or embarrassment should justify the Government in blasting the reputation and ruining the business of a citizen without giving him an opportunity to know exactly who has testified against him and to what he has testified. The reports of inspectors under any practice should be open to the person who may be affected by the fraudorder. He should be allowed to know who have given information or testified against him, and citizens who are interviewed should understand that their names and statements would be open to inspection by the person against whom they testify or give information. This would have a most wholesome and salutary influence. Men would see that the statements that were written up by the post-office inspectors and credited to them were fair and just and absolutely true. There should be no inducement or opportunity for men to attempt to stab the business or reputation of rivals in the dark. The growth of the national administration. 83. The "Spoils System" in National Administration It was early discovered that federal offices could be used to reward friends and punish enemies without regard to administrative efficiency, and this practice steadily developed until, in Andrew Jackson's day, it became an open and avowed rule of politics. The pass to which the unhampered spoils system brought the national administration is described in the following report to the Senate in 1882. The growth of our country from 350,000 square miles to 4,000,000, the increase of population from 3,000,000 to 50,000,000, the addition of twenty-five States, imperial in size and capabilities, have caused a corresponding development of the machinery and faculties of the government. In the beginning even so late as 1801 there were 906 post-offices; now there are 44,848. Then there were 69 custom-houses; now there are 135. Then the revenues were less than $3,000,000; now they are $400,000,000. Then our ministers to foreign countries were 4; now they are 33. Then our consuls were 63; now they are 728. Then less than 1,000 men sufficed to administer the government; now more than 100,000 are needed. Then one man might personally know, appoint on their merits, supervise the performance of their duties, and for sufficient cause remove all officers; now, no single human being, however great his intelligence, discrimination, industry, endurance, devotion, even if relieved of every other duty, can possibly, unaided, select and retain in official station those best fitted to discharge the many and varied and delicate functions of the government. It has come to pass that the work of paying political debts and discharging political obligations, of rewarding personal friends and whelmed by punishing personal foes, is the first to confront each President on assuming the duties of his office, and is ever present with him even to the last moment of his official term, giving him no rest and little time for the transaction of other business, or for the study of any higher or grander problems of statesmanship. He is compelled to give daily audience to those who personally seek place, or to the army of those who back them. He is to do what some The over office seekers. predecessor of his has left undone, or to undo what others before him have done; to put this man up and that man down, as the system of political rewards and punishments shall seem to him to demand. Instead of the study of great questions of statesmanship, of broad and comprehensive administrative policy, either as it may concern this particular country at home, or the relations of this great nation to the other nations of the earth, he must devote himself to the petty business of weighing in the balance the political considerations that shall determine the claim of this friend or that political supporter to the possession of some office of profit or honor under him. of the office. The office of Chief Magistrate has undergone in practice a The radical change. The President of the Republic created by the perversion Constitution in the beginning, and the Chief Magistrate of to-day, President's are two entirely different public functionaries. There has grown up such a perversion of the duties of that high office, such a prostitution of it to ends unworthy the great idea of its creation, imposing burdens so grievous, and so degrading of all the faculties and functions becoming its occupant, that a change has already come in the character of the government itself, which, if not corrected, will be permanent and disastrous. Thus hampered and beset, the Chief Magistrate of this nation wears out his term and his life in the petty services of party, and in the bestowal of the favors its ascendency commands. He gives daily audience to beggars for place, and sits in judgment upon the party claims of contestants. The Executive Mansion is besieged, if not sacked, and its corri- The nation humiliated dors and chambers are crowded each day with the ever-changing, by office but never-ending throng. Every Chief Magistrate, since the evil seekers. has grown to its present proportions, has cried out for deliverance. Physical endurance, even, is taxed beyond its power. More than one President is believed to have lost his life from this cause. The spectacle exhibited of the Chief Magistrate of this great nation, feeding, like a keeper, his flock, the hungry, clamorous, crowding, jostling multitude which daily gathers around the dispenser of patronage, is humiliating to the patriotic citizen interested alone Congressmen beseiged by placehunters. The Civil in national progress and grandeur. Each President, whatever may be his political associations, however strong may be his personal characteristics, steps into a current, the force of which is constantly increasing. He can neither stem nor control it, much less direct his own course, as he is buffeted and driven hither and thither by its uncertain and unmanageable forces. The malign influence of political domination in appointments to office is wide-spread, and reaches out from the President himself to all possible means of approach to the appointing power. It poisons the very air we breathe. No Congressman in accord with the dispenser of power can wholly escape it. It is ever present. When he awakes in the morning it is at his door, and when he retires at night it haunts his chamber. It goes before him, it follows after him, and it meets him on the way. It levies contributions on all the relationships of a Congressman's life, summons kinship and friendship and interest to its aid, and imposes upon him a work which is never finished and from which there is no release. Time is consumed, strength is exhausted, the mind is absorbed, and the vital forces of the legislator, mental, as well as physical, are spent in the never-ending struggle for offices. 84. The Civil Service Act In order to remove a large number of routine and subordinate offices from the baneful influence of partisanship, Congress passed in 1883 an act authorizing the establishment of a system of examinations testing the fitness of candidates for certain classes of government positions. The clauses showing the general purpose of the act are given here: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President is authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, three persons, not more than two of whom shall be adherents of the same party, as Civil Service Commissioners, and said three Commissioners shall constitute the United States Civil Service Commission. Said Commissioners shall hold no other official place under the United States. The President may remove any Commissioner; and any vacancy in the position of Commissioner shall be so filled by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, as to conform to said conditions for the first selection of Commissioners. The Commissioners shall each receive a salary of three thousand five hundred dollars a year. And each of said Commissioners shall be paid his necessary traveling expenses incurred in the discharge of his duty as a Commis sioner. of the Commission. SEC. 2. That it shall be the duty of said Commissioners: First. To aid the President, as he may request, in preparing Duties suitable rules for carrying this act into effect, and when said rules shall have been promulgated it shall be the duty of all officers of the United States in the departments and offices to which any such rules may relate to aid, in all proper ways, in carrying said rules, and any modifications thereof, into effect. Second. And, among other things, said rules shall provide and declare, as nearly as the conditions of good administration will warrant, as follows: First, for open, competitive examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified hereunder. Such examinations shall be practical in their character, and so far as may be shall relate to those matters which will fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of the persons examined to discharge the duties of the service into which they seek to be appointed. Second, that all the offices, places, and employments so arranged or to be arranged in classes shall be filled by selections according to grade from among those graded highest as the results of such competitive examinations. Third, appointments to the public service aforesaid in the departments at Washington shall be apportioned among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia upon the basis of population as ascertained at the last preceding census. Every application for an examination shall contain, among other things, P |