Civil Service Act

CIVIL SERVICE ACT

Early advocates of a civil service believed that it was necessary to reform the spoils system, a process by which an individual who supported the election of a candidate was rewarded with a position in the government. Rather than personal favors, these reformers wanted some type of test of merit, or required qualifications for persons appointed to non-elected positions in government. Reform supporters won a victory in 1871 when legislation, adopted as a rider to an appropriation act, authorized the establishment of regulations for admission into the civil service with regard to knowledge, ability, and other job performance factors. President Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) appointed George William Curtis as chairman of an Advisory Board of the Civil Service, later called the Civil Service Commission. But after two years of significant pioneer work by the commission, Congress failed to grant additional funds for its support. Nonetheless President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881), Grant's successor, continued to encourage the reformers, who regrouped in 1880 to organize the Civil Service Reform Association.

The problem was highlighted in 1881, when a deranged office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield. Civil Service reformers exploited the president's death by convincing the public that the spoils system was responsible for his murder. The Civil Service Act of 1883—also known as the Pendleton Act after its sponsor, Senator George H. Pendleton—established a bipartisan commission to oversee a merit system of examinations for specific public service positions. About 13,000 positions, less than ten percent of the civilian positions in the federal government at that time, were classified under the merit system, and applicants for these positions were subject to competitive examinations.

The Pendleton Act transformed the civil service and greatly affected the organization of political parties. By 1900, government workers were becoming more professional and better educated, and in the matter of their selection, political influence was being replaced by business skill and overall competency. Other legislation followed the Civil Service Act of 1883. In 1903, extensive rule changes were made; in 1920 the Civil Service Retirement Act was adopted; the Classification Act was passed in 1923, defining grades, qualifications, and salary ranges; and in 1940, the Hatch Act limited the political activity of federal officials.

A series of executive orders was also important in shifting the emphasis from a necessary political reform to a positive search for better procedures and personnel. Some of the more important of these directives reflected the changing nature of national life, its economy, and its values. After the Great Depression began in 1929, for example, the federal government expanded its activities and its personnel. To facilitate policy formulation, a 1931 executive order established a Council for Personnel Administration to link the new personnel services of the federal departments to the Civil Service Commission. By 1938 the number of federal employees had increased greatly, and an executive order in that year provided for better personnel management, on-the-job training, and extension of the merit system.

As the tensions that led to World War II (1939–1945) increased, the government tightened its personnel procedures to secure greater efficiency in the face of the developing threat of war. In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) issued an executive order establishing the Liaison Office for Personnel Management, directly under presidential control. When World War II expanded the civil service to 3.8 million people, the merit system was virtually abandoned, but it was revived at the end of the war.

The exposure of the corruption in the Watergate scandal under President Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974) prompted further reform. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the most sweeping reform legislation since the Pendleton Act in 1883. It abolished the Civil Service Commission and split its functions among an Office of Personnel Management, a Federal Labor Relations Authority, and an independent quasi-judicial Merit System Protection Board.

See also: Spoils System

FURTHER READING

Hoogenboom, Ari. Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

Rose, Jonathan. "From Spoils to Merit: 195 Years of the U.S. Civil Service." Scholastic Update, September 20, 1985.

Van Riper, Paul. History of the United States Civil Service. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1958.

Weisenberger, Bernard A. "Reinventing Government, 1882." American Heritage, February/March 1994.