Patronage Monopoly and the Pendleton Bill [pp. 185-207]

PA TRONAGE MOVOPOL Y AND THE PENDLE TON BILL. I9 I
Nothing, I repeat, is so central, so pervading, so disastrous in
our administrative affairs, as the abuse of that power-its auda cious, long-continued rebellion against the Constitution, the
plain duties of office, and the moral obligations of politics.
Since Jackson's time, it has been treated rather as a perquisite
and a partisan prerogative, than as a public trust.
This great authority thus used-or rather the opportunity
thus to prostitute it by giving offices and salaries as bribes and
favors-is the vast power ofpatronage in our politics, that power
for which every official is anxious in the degree that he is venal;
that power upon which every party relies in the degree that it
is weak in principles and virtues. In every grade in the vast
range of official life, from the President who appoints to the
humblest lighthouse or signal-station keeper allowed to employ
an assistant, there is a portion of this patronage, and a dozen or
a hundred engaged in a fierce competition of influence for its
exercise in their favor. Every postmaster with the' patronage
of employing ten or a hundred clerks must confront a hundred
or a thousand persons who hustle and intrigue for those places
-each backed by political and personal influence. Every revenue collector with the authority of nominating his subordinates is besieged by great numbers of merciless, clamorous
office-seekers, each insisting that his claims upon favor and his
influence in the party most deserve a place. The President,
every head of department, and even some chiefs of bureaus, are
pressed, threatened, and implored by great numbers of officeseekers, who bring letters, petitions, Congressmen, and not infrequently considerable delegations, in order to exert an overawing influence for appointments. When we read in a morning
journal that "three fourths of the time of the President is occupied in hearing applications for office," the explanation is that
Senators, Representatives, great politicians, and a miscellaneous
rabble of office-seekers threaten and importune him for office;
when ex-Secretary Windom declared that "for the last hundred
days a few thousand men in search of office had taken nine
tenths of the time of the President and his cabinet;" when
members of Congress tell us that a single mail sometimes brings
them from twenty to a hundred letters about appointing or removing a single postmaster or collector; when General Garfield