But in the National Government scores of
thousands of offices have been put under the merit system, chiefly
through the action of the National Civil Service Commission.
The use of Government offices as patronage is a handicap difficult
to overestimate from the standpoint of those who strive to get good
government. Any effort for reform of any sort, National, State, or
municipal, results in the reformers immediately finding themselves face
to face with an organized band of drilled mercenaries who are paid out
of the public chest to train themselves with such skill that ordinary
good citizens when they meet them at the polls are in much the position
of militia matched against regular troops. Yet these citizens themselves
support and pay their opponents in such a way that they are drilled
to overthrow the very men who support them. Civil Service Reform is
designed primarily to give the average American citizen a fair chance in
politics, to give to this citizen the same weight in politics that the
"ward heeler" has.
Patronage does not really help a party. It helps the bosses to get
control of the machinery of the party--as in 1912 was true of the
Republican party--but it does not help the party.
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