Jump to: navigation , search. Engraved portrait of George Hunt Pendleton Pendleton was from Cincinnati and served as a United States Senator from He sponsored the U. Civil Service Commission. Garfield George Pendleton. Click here to follow election results! The Pendleton Act is a federal law passed in reforming the civil service and establishing the United States Civil Service Commission. It ended the spoils system of political patronage and established competitive examinations for hiring civil servants.
The election of Andrew Jackson in established the spoils system , in which federal civil service jobs went to political supporters, party members, family, and friends of the winning administration. Following the assassination of President James Garfield in by a disgruntled job-seeker, public support grew for civil service reform. The act established the United States Civil Service Commission as a nonpartisan federal agency to oversee the hiring of federal civil servants.
The commission consisted of three members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, not more than two of whom could be members of the same political party. The primary duty of the Commission was to create and administer standardized competency examinations for civil service job candidates. The Commission also appointed a Chief Examiner to coordinate the activities of state and territorial examination boards, which were modeled after the federal commission.
Finally, the act authorized the federal commission to promulgate rules and regulations for the performance of its duties, which were to be published in an annual report to the President and Congress rulemaking was not fully standardized and centralized until the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act , after which all regulations were published in the Federal Register.
The act took several steps to eliminate political patronage in the civil service. Besides requiring exams, it also instructed the Commission to apportion civil service appointments among the states and territories according to their population. Any examiner who unfairly aided or injured a candidate's chances, or altered the results of an exam, would be found guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fines or imprisonment.
No Senator or Representative could make a recommendation to hire a candidate, they could only offer character references. Finally, the act held that only two members of the same could serve in the civil service at the same time. The act prohibited civil servants from using federal money or buildings for political purposes.
It also banned them from coercing a subordinate to make any sort of political donation or action. Section 14 of the act issued a blanket ban on payments by civil servants to other civil servants to obtain political favors. That system had evolved in the early nineteenth century, and relied on the well-known political adage, "to the victor belong the spoils. The idea of rotation in office, however, was thought to be "democratic.
The duties of all public officers are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance. The constant turnover provided no institutional memory; government workers panicked at every election and had little sense of loyalty to their jobs, because their tenure was often of such short duration. As Henry Clay put it, government officials after an election are "like the inhabitants of Cairo when the plague breaks out; no one knows who is next to encounter the stroke of death.
Over the years, the flaws became more serious and obvious. Political leaders required their patronage appointees to devote time and money to party affairs. After each election winners were besieged by hungry office-seekers, and wrangling between the president and Congress over patronage became endemic. By the s, one could open a Washington newspaper after an election and find many advertisements like this one:. The situation was compounded by the growth of the federal bureaucracy.
In Jackson's time there had been 20, persons on the federal payroll. By end of the Civil War the number had increased to 53,; by , ,; and by , , Presidents were hounded by office- seekers. When James Garfield became president he discovered hungry office-seekers "lying in wait" for him "like vultures for a wounded bison. Moreover, new government jobs required special skills.
The use of typewriters, introduced in the early s, meant that mere literacy and decent penmanship were no longer enough for a clerk's job.
With the creation of administrative agencies like the Interstate Commerce Commission and specialized agricultural bureaus, one needed scientific expertise.
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