1 gen 1883 anni - Pendleton Act establishes the Civil Service Commission

Descrizione:

An 1883 law establishing a nonpartisan Civil Service Commission to fill federal jobs by examination. The Pendleton Act dealt a major blow to the “spoils system” and sought to ensure that government positions were filled by trained, professional employees.


In the wake of Garfield’s death, Congress passed the Pendleton Act (1883), establishing a nonpartisan Civil Service Commission to fill federal jobs by examination. Initially, civil service applied to only 10 percent of such jobs, but the act laid the groundwork for a major transformation of public employment. By the 1910s, Congress extended the act to cover most federal positions; cities and states across the country enacted similar laws.

Civil service laws had their downside. In the race for government jobs, they tilted the balance toward middle-class applicants who could perform well on tests. “Firemen now must know equations,” complained a critic, “and be up on Euclid too.” But the laws put talented professionals in office and discouraged politicians from appointing unqualified party hacks. The civil service also brought stability and consistency to government, since officials did not lose their jobs every time their party lost power. In the long run, civil service laws markedly reduced corruption and increased government efficiency.
Leaders of the civil service movement included many classical liberals, former Republicans who became disillusioned with Reconstruction and advocated smaller, more professionalized government. Many had opposed President Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection in 1872. In 1884, they again left the Republican Party because they could not stomach its scandal-tainted candidate, James Blaine. Liberal Republicans — ridiculed by their enemies as Mugwumps (fence-sitters who had their “mugs” on one side and their “wumps” on the other) — helped elect Democrat Grover Cleveland. They believed he shared their vision of smaller government.
As president, Cleveland showed that he largely did share their views. He vetoed, for example, thousands of bills providing pensions for individual Union veterans. But in 1887, responding to pressure from farmer-labor advocates in the Democratic Party who demanded action to limit corporate power, he signed the Interstate Commerce Act (see “Farmers and Workers: The Cooperative Alliance” in Chapter 16). At the same time, municipal and state-level initiatives were showing how expanded government could help solve industrial problems. In the 1870s and early 1880s, many states created Bureaus of Labor Statistics to investigate workplace safety and unemployment. Some appointed commissions to oversee key industries, from banking to dairy farming. By later standards, such commissions were underfunded, but even when they lacked legal power, energetic commissioners could serve as public advocates, exposing unsafe practices and generating pressure for further laws.

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