Group 1 -- Speech of Senator Hawley, December 13, 1882

There has been a constant and a steady growth of the idea that offices might be used to strengthen candidates and to reward active workers. The doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils" became (though it always provoked a smile) the practical rule of the country. The evils of the existing system can not be denied by any man, whatever his position with regard to any of the pending measures for civil-service reform. They are obvious, more clearly obvious to members of Congress than to anybody else. They are obvious in the suffering and humiliation of the employés. The condition of the majority of them is pitiable. They are under a sort of degradation that we have no right to impose upon our friends and neighbors and fellow-citizens. They are only partially secured in their positions by their character and by the good work they may do. How well we know that they do not depend upon those things to maintain them in place; that they are constantly coming to members of Congress and applying to influential friends every-where to strengthen what they call their "influence" till the word "influence" has become a cant term, a slang term among them. "Who is your influence?" is the phrase. "I have none. My influence is dead." Or, "My influence was in Congress ten or fifteen years ago, and he is not in political life now, or he has no influence himself;" "I must get some influence," &c.; &c. These are the every-day phrases among the employés; and whenever a new chief of a bureau comes in, not to say a new Cabinet officer or a new President, there is a hurrying and a scurrying among all the terrified flock to strengthen themselves in position; not by the good record they may have or the good character they may have maintained, but by the recommendations of political friends. By this system the inefficient are kept in longer than they would be otherwise. These are facts so well known that I ought to ask pardon for repeating them.

The man; who is less efficient than his fellows, conscious that he has less of character or of ability, or of both, than they, is the man, who is almost certain to have the largest pile of papers in support of his position. And thereby it becomes exceedingly difficult to remove him. More persons are needed for the name labor than there would be under some ideal system, I do not say what. We can imagine that if they were appointed purely for efficiency and character and maintained for that, fewer persons — I do not pretend to say how many, because no man knows; the estimate are quite at random; some say a quarter less, some say a half — would do the work equally well.

Moreover there is unnecessary excuse. The salaries must be kept higher in accordance with obvious laws of economy, because people will not enter into an uncertain service for the price they would be willing to take if they were guaranteed long continuance, or life service. A young man who comes here for one, two, three, four, or five years is very hungry indeed to get his ten, twelve, or fourteen hundred dollars a year. If he had any guarantee of long service, or of service during good behavior (and absolutely no minute longer than that), there would be in abundance young men of capacity willing to come here and begin at six, seven, eight, or nine hundred dollars a year, trusting to a well-graded system for promotion to nine, ten, eleven, or twelve hundred dollars, as they continued in the service. Our present system is therefore, in that sense, wasteful and extravagant.

From The Congressional Record. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882. 241.