American Politics: Reforming the Spoils System

Sources

The Spoils System. In 1881 more than 50 percent of all federal jobs were patronage positions. As control of the presidency shifted from one major party to the other in 1885, 1889, 1893, and 1897, dramatic turnovers occurred in personnel. Post Office positions were considered excellent rewards for party loyalists, and the department became notorious for its high numbers of under-worked administrators. After he took office for his first term in 1885, President Cleveland, the first Democratic president since James Buchanan left office in 1861, replaced nearly forty thousand postmasters. This system of rewards was costly, created chaos and inefficiencies, and became the focus of critics who saw patronage as an abuse of power. As governing the nation became increasing complex and the amount of work multiplied, members of both parties saw the need for a class of civil-service workers who would not be dependent on party patronage for their jobs and would remain in their positions regardless of party turnovers.

Civil-Service Reform. Educated and well-to-do Americans pointed to corruption in the spoils system and called for civil-service reform, but others complained that the true motive of these individuals was to weaken the urban bosses, who had taken power away from the upper- and middle-class Anglo-Saxon Protestants who had once dominated city, state, and national politics and placed it in the hands of immigrants, Catholics, and the working class. Changing the spoils system proved difficult. Congress was reluctant to take away a valuable tool for garnering voter support. Attempts at reform took place during the presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) and Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), but the entrenched patronage system remained largely intact.

The Pendleton Act. Following the assassination of President Garfield by a frustrated office seeker, a group of concerned citizens—including professors, newspaper editors, lawyers, and ministers—organized the Civil Service Reform Association in 1882 and won the support of the Democratic senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed on 16 January 1883. The act authorized the president to appoint a three-person Civil Service Commission, which established a system of standards for federal jobs and opened a competitive application process for hiring. The act also barred political candidates from soliciting campaign contributions from federal workers. The new system covered about 14 percent of government appointments at first and about 40 percent by 1900. While patronage did not disappear altogether, reforms helped to establish a professional identity for government workers akin to those of doctors and lawyers. There emerged a class of federal employees who attempted with varying degrees of success to remain above the fray of party politics.

Stalwarts versus Mugwumps. Republican “Stalwarts” who relied on the spoils systems for support were outraged by the reform attempts of first the “Half Breeds” and later the “Mugwumps” in their party. Stalwarts accused Mugwumps of wanting government jobs to go to college-educated relatives who could pass the new civil-service tests. At their 1884 national convention the Republicans nominated James G. Blaine, a Half Breed whose reputation had been damaged eight years earlier by allegations that he had taken bribes from the rail-roads. As his running mate, the Republicans had chosen Sen. John A. Logan, a Stalwart. After the Democrats responded by nominating Grover Cleveland, a reform candidate with a reputation for honesty, the Mugwumps bolted their own party to support him, and Cleveland won the election.

Sources

Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961);

Gerald W. McFarland, Mugwumps, Morals, and Politics, 1844-1928 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975).