#176: George William Curtis and the 'Good War' of Civil Service Reform

While many Americans may not recognize his name, George William Curtis was one of the most influential political leaders who was well ahead of his time. What can we take away from just one of his speeches on civil service reform? Hear how Curtis's thoughts can instill some foundational principles in our political conversations about those who serve in government.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Patriotism, faith, national unity, education, physical responsibility, civility, the values that define America. Fascinating stories and talks from America-loving patriots dedicated to preserving freedom, opportunity, and justice. Welcome to the Friends and Fellow Citizens Podcast. Greetings, everybody. Welcome to Friends and Fellow Citizens. I'm your host, Sherman Tyloski, as always. Thank you all so much for joining me in this solo episode, episode 176. If you're new to this podcast, welcome aboard. Firstly, a big thank you to our Patreon supporters. They are helping to keep this show going. They're enjoying bonuses with their listenership experience. So if you are enjoying our content, like additional benefits, including, of course, bonus content and even podcast mugs, check out the Patreon page in the show notes below. If you haven't already done so, make sure to smash that subscribe button or sign up for our email list at our website, georgewashingtoninstitute.org. We've been talking a bit about civil service reform in this podcast. We talked a little bit about regulations in the last solo episode, about the Wickard case. And I'd like to bill up on this because there seems to be nowadays a lack of conversation on some of the historical elements of civil service reform. Now we can go through a bunch of different eras where we had changes in the civil service. If you think in terms of, for example, the spoil system that Andrew Jackson very much popularized, and uh you can point to the Pendleton Act. But I'd like to do something different today, and we we certainly might go through some of those historical episodes, but today I'd like to focus on a speech, uh, a speech by a gentleman whom you may or may not have heard of. I can tell you I did not hear about this gentleman before planning this podcast about civil service reform. And it turns out this gentleman actually did quite a bit and was probably considered maybe even a radical at the time, but obviously was someone to try and bring different sides to big issues, to, for example, women's suffrage and public education, civil rights. So this is uh the gentleman by the name of George William Curtis. I won't give too long of a biography. Uh, if you are interested in learning more about maybe some of the other things that George William Curtis has done, definitely let me know. Uh, but this man is a staunch abolitionist, and he uh is very much a part of the, of course, the Republican Party at the time. And uh he was also a really good public speaker as well. Um, he was one to deliver a lot of speeches uh during his time, of course, on the issues he cared about. Uh what I can tell you is George William Curtis, born in 1824 in Providence, Rhode Island, and he was relatively close to Ralph Walda Emerson at some point in his life, uh, but he was also one to know how to write. And he wrote notably for the Harper's Weekly, which was uh very much uh one of the most influential uh magazines of politics in that era, in the in the 1850s, 60s, uh in the 70s, actually into the early 20th century. We're not gonna do uh an episode about the Harper's Weekly this week. What I'd like to do is focus on just this one small aspect. Now keep in mind what we are covering today, according to just one snippet of George William Curtis and his career. Turns out that he really did a lot in his life. I am in my understanding of his biography. I mean, there's so many different angles you can take. But one position that he took on was he was president of the National Civil Service Reform League. And even though he was a staunch Republican, he did not support James Blaine as candidate for the 1884 presidential election, which in of itself is not surprising, maybe, because for someone like like Mr. Curtis, who was very much uh part of that very activist and very uh active part of the Republican Party, want to see a lot of these social changes. Uh, it's it certainly doesn't surprise me in that sense. However, I I do think we need to take a bit more uh time to look at what it is that he actually said about these issues and whether or not we think these issues are really necessary as partisan as we might think. I'm sure a lot of people at the time, uh those who critique him probably critique him as a partisan, as as most most people do with partisan politics. So this speech we are focusing on today is from 1885. So certainly in the very, very much later part of his life, he uh George Willing Curtis uh dies on August 31st, 1892. Uh so even though he wouldn't be alive for beyond the seven years after this speech, I think the speech will give you a sense of the the kind of person he was and the kinds of issues he was thinking about. And perhaps not a lot of people were thinking about the issues of civil service reform. But as you might be able to tell with our discussion today, George William Curtis probably offers something that maybe some maybe something we can embrace here uh in 2025 and beyond, maybe in future years. I want to step back and say that I think one of the problems we have with regards to a lot of these issues, whether it be civil service reform or say education or civil rights, at least this is just my impression, but we just don't have a lot of these great moral leaders nowadays. I mean, we certainly have people whom we admire and whatnot. I'm not saying they've they don't have morals, I'm saying that we need someone who can really elevate beyond quite uh quite a few different factions, and it's very, very difficult to do that nowadays, it seems like. But at that time they had people like George William Curtis, and not everything was, of course, so great and hunky-dory. That being said, though, it's nice to have these kinds of intellectuals and people who uh were able to communicate these ideas. It wasn't just a represented from some district. This is someone who uh people can read about. And so I just want to preface that before we get to the speech. So the 1885, just to give you a bit of context, this is the first year of the Grover Cleveland administration. Grover Cleveland wins in 1884, defeating James Blaine, the candidate whom I just mentioned. So Grover Cleveland is a Democrat, okay, and this is a Republican writing about civil service reform. And I want to want you to watch and see what what do you think what do you think this speech says about maybe about Mr. Curse and maybe about Grover Cleveland too? Because I think this might really surprise you in terms of this uh this discussion of how the presidency is going at this time. The way I'm gonna do this is I'm gonna break these, break my points down today uh based on the passages. So I'm going to just uh give you a sense of the big takeaways from his speech. His speech is not super duper long. I've included the link down in the show notes below if you like to read it in full. Uh, but I to like to break this down to you in uh about nine basic points. So and these to at least to in terms of my my reading, um, these are are the ones that I think pop out the most. And I think the goal here is to see what what sort of interesting facts didn't do you find interesting? Uh and uh what why why do you think those things could maybe inform us about our political climate today? Maybe the the political discussions on civil service. What can those discussions learn about uh George William Curtis or about how people thought of civil service reform at the time? Okay, so let's get into it. Okay, though, so George William Curtis is delivering a speech to uh his organization and uh the National Service Civil Service Reform League. And the first point he makes in the speech is civil service reform is not very central to either party. What that means is you can't describe the Democratic Party or the Republican Party as a civil service reform party. I found this interesting because if you look at how politicians talk about themselves or about the political class, they always try to distance themselves, or they always say, Oh, well, I'm not I'm I'm different than the politicians in DC. I'm not any ordinary politician. Because of course, who who's going to tell everybody that they're just like everybody else? What uh Curtis is trying to get at, I think, is that it's it's difficult to, I think, to make civil service reform because both parties really don't prioritize it. It's not like and the way he describes it is he uses the example of slavery, of uh slavery between, say, the Democratic Party and the Whigs. Curtis contrasts civil service reform with slavery because slavery was inherently a huge issue with the major parties at the time. Civil service reform, it's just not the case. It's not as fundamental, which might which might tick off some people in the Republican Party, right? Because obviously, as we understand it, right, conservatives generally believe in the idea, of course, of limited government, right? And part of limited government is to try and reform civil service so that you uh you get rid of the civil servants who are not doing their jobs or are doing a job that isn't beneficial to uh running a government. Uh, but Curtis really gets in the heart of how just inherently within the institutions of the party, I don't think he's necessarily maybe always getting into the ideologies of politics, but rather he's saying that these parties in and themselves really don't take into account of civil service, probably because the both parties really benefit from a lack of civil service reform, which I don't know if he explicitly says that, but I do think he probably in his back of his mind probably encountered a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who have resisted a reform in part because they've they have benefited from the spoil system or from a lack of reform of the civil service. Okay, the second point Curtis makes is that he says it is possible for a president to not fill civil service positions with a bunch of party members. And and and Curtis calls this idea of replacing civil servants with your own party members what he calls an abuse of public trust, which I find interesting because it goes beyond just the act of putting your own party members in there, you're actually betraying something even larger, and that is you're betraying the public. Instead, a president can choose to put people in who will do the job. And the quote he says on page 12, he says, quote, he serves his party best, who serves his country most. What a great quote. I mean, that's that's pretty uh profound there. And and what I think he's trying to get at is and maybe this is not something he explicitly says, but one takeaway I thought when I when he said this, is we we have to get away from this idea that we we can't ign enact change in civil service. And uh Curtis, of course, points to one specific figure whom he thinks is a gr and a great example of that president who literally chooses to not put a bunch of Democrats in the civil service, and that is President Grover Cleveland. And so when you read the speech, you can definitely see that George William Cruz, as a Republican himself, is admiring the work of President Grover Cleveland. And so this is this point here is probably the biggest endorsement of Grover Cleveland yet. And I I I do think this is an important piece here because we often forget that parties demand something from their own members. They demand loyalty, they demand rewards, right? And one of these real kinds of rewards is awarding positions in government. What Curtis might be saying is that this is an this this could have been you if you had a different president in there, a president who believed in partisanship as of as just the primary vehicle to power, you could have had a president who just decided, you know, I can just put in all these people who are from my party into these positions, and who's gonna stop me? And I I I think Curtis is probably getting to something, maybe indicating that part of civil service service reform is is kind of a bit like winning the lottery if you're gonna if you're gonna bank on the president for ensuring that the civil service is what it is, and that is it is serving at the pleasure of the president and it is not engaging in activities that are not fitting for public office. Number three, one one thing he talks about is about this idea of removing someone from a particular position, right? Because this is oftentimes in our political kind of discussions and debates, whenever someone is removed from an agency, a lot of people, depending on what side of the aisle you're on, a lot of people will take it as like, wow, like holy cow, this this person just lost a job, right? It's probably because of this reaction to someone who maybe thought was going to be in the job for a while and all of a sudden is just removed right away. And what Curtis is saying is that when you when a president removes someone from the civil service, it's not necessarily because the person removed was morally bad. Because we always have that instinct instinct, particularly if you are supporting the removal of that person. You automatically think that the president is removing that person because that person is a cancer to the institution or is running against the president's agendas. And then that might be the case. Okay, there probably have obviously have been cases where uh someone in the civil service or maybe a past political appointee just not doing the job at the pleasure of the the incumbent president. But what Curtis is saying is that removing someone should be about how that person's official conduct has been evaluated and how how is it that person is conducting in that official capacity. Absolutely, this point is so central to civil service reform. When someone is removed, there has to be a reason. And and a lot of times I don't think we we are getting a lot of those reasons from the president or the president's team. I think that I think is a big problem because even if there's some sort of backstage negotiation going on, and I'm sure, and of course that happens a lot in DC. However, I think I do think in come when it comes to transparency, if we want to have some idea of when someone should be removed from a post, we should really understand how that how is it that that person behaved, right? Because if it's of any other consideration, including the president wants to implement more partisans or wants to maybe eventually eliminate that agency, right? Then then that becomes a very complicated situation. And I I just want to emphasize again this point of making these key distinctions. Curtis seems like he's trying to make these distinctions here and trying to point out that we we need to maybe step back a little bit and realize that there's a lot more nuance and a lot more complexity to civil service reform than we might think it is. Point number four. This is a term that I I had never seen before, but I imagine that this is something that Mr. Cruz probably doesn't like. Curtis cites partisan prostitution of the civil service as basically the biggest evil. Okay. And he uh effectively is saying that obviously if you if you make the civil service a partisan vehicle, then obviously it's it's going to erode anything, any understanding and any respect we have for the civil service. But he also cites something here, and this is probably the biggest point uh for point number four. He said you know, offensive partisanship is a just cause for removing these people. So what is offensive partisanship? Well, he doesn't define it like a political science one-one textbook, but what he does say from what he s explains later on in the speech, offensive partisanship is effectively when people use the office for pure partisan purposes. You know, it's like offense, right? They are using this to go on the offensive for their party. And he really emphasizes this point of how offensive partisanship really should be targeted as part of civil service reform. That civil service reform should attempt to look for those individuals and those systems that effectively try to turn the civil service into part of a partisan machine. The next point is uh Curtis praises a few people here. He praises Albert Gallatin, who was the Treasury Secretary under President Jefferson. And I'd like to just read a little bit from this point here because uh, of course, Albert Gallatin is not someone whom we covered extensively here in this podcast. However, uh, this is part of this podcast has covered some of these uh interesting figures, uh, and figures who might who might not be getting a whole lot of attention, but who definitely have some sort of clout in American history. So let me read to you this part here from Mr. Gallatin. So uh Curtis explained how when Gallatin sent such a message to uh the collector's revenue, because obviously the treasury is is part of part of that of collecting revenue for the government, Gallatin wrote that um it was his desire that, quote, the door of office be no longer shut against any man merely on account of his political opinions, but that, whether he shall differ or not from those avowed either by you or by himself by myself, integrity and capacity suitable to the station be the only qualifications that shall direct our choice. Permit me, since I have touched the subject, to add that while freedoms whilst freedom of opinion and freedom of suffrage at public elections are considered by the president as imprescriptible rights which possess citizens you cannot have lost by becoming public officers, he will regard any exercise of official influence to restrain or control the same right in others as injurious to that part of the public administration which is confided to your care and practically destructive of the fundamental principles of a Republican constitution. What Gallatin is saying here is we have to start hiring people based on qualifications, and that people can have their own opinions. And there's this whole conversation about uh about civil servants is that there's this idea that somehow civil servants they just can't have a political opinion. That there's this sense a lot from a lot of people that civil servants uh guests shouldn't just shouldn't have an opinion. If they think about something, they should just zip their mouth and never sit never utter anything again. And and that's not the case, right? When people are removed or people are shuffled, what that means is that the the president might have different priorities or might think that someone probably maybe is a better fit for. In a different position. But we have to always remember that we're we shouldn't be taking away, and we're not trying to take away civil servants' abilities to express political opinions. There are plenty of ways to do that. It's just that there are certain rules in place that prevent this idea of a civil servant or some from the government uh on purpose or inadvertently making a political opinion when they shouldn't have. I think is making this point of how uh you know this is not about going it shouldn't be going after people based on political opinions. Oh my goodness, what what a novel idea, right? Wow, how about hiring people based on qualifications and not on political opinions? See, this is the point where even as we have these debates nowadays about how we we shouldn't have people get fired because of their political opinions. There were people back then during Albert Gallatin's time who were wrestling with this idea with these ideas. So what I'm trying to say is our debates might sound new, might feel new, maybe they aren't. And maybe it's just it's the case for a lot of our political debates today. Curtis also does cite uh Daniel Webster, and of course, goes back to Grover Cleveland, right? Of course, Daniel Webster is one of the uh most notable senators of all time and all and definitely a great statesman. So just to backtrack a bit, uh, I do think looking at these figures, I'm glad that Mr. Curtis has picked some pretty good people because if if we picked some very, very shady characters, then I think we would have a problem. But I think it's nice that he's picked some very, very uh notable characters in American politics too as part of his examples. Okay, point number six. Let's not go back to removing someone because we find that that person is committing offensive partisanship. So again, that person is using that office or that capacity to promote partisan politics. One thing Curtis discusses is he says that removing a Republican for offensive partisanship, okay, as an example. That's a message saying that had it had it been a Democrat that was caught for offensive partisanship, that that Democrat would have been removed for the same reason. What Curtis seems to be getting at is when when we start to proactively remove people and prevent this partisanship nonsense, we are making a pretty big statement, and we should be making a statement that we are applying the same principles no matter what party label uh someone is. If that person is committing offensive partisanship, is abusing the office upon which he or she pledged to defend and pledge to uphold, then we then we are maybe perhaps making some progress on civil service reform. It it seems like such a simple concept, right? But think about how in recent years uh presidents have been a lot less reluctant to and pick appointees and pick people for posts uh that are of a different party. And uh I think that's a very, very big problem. I think that's a big impediment for civil service reform. By picking people who have credentials, who can be from a different party, those people can maybe show by example. And Curtis even mentions some of these examples of people who, of course, are great. Uh Grover Cleveland uh has people whom Grover Cleveland has picked or has kept as examples of how when you're a president, you don't have to remove every single uh person who isn't wanted to share the same political ideology or the same political party. Let me cite a couple examples for you and come that he lists on page twelve. Curtis wrote about how the uh president Cleveland has kept, has reappointed a Republican postmaster. Because Grover Cleveland probably thinks he's doing a good job. Cleveland has selected a Democrat for a collector who is a businessman, who is not a typical politician, and who and this person, this Democrat businessman, says he doesn't really care about politics and he just wants to run the Custom House based on his business ideas. He uh Grover Cleveland has picked a Republican to run the naval office. I mean, these are just some of the examples he lists, right, to try and defend the case and try to tell his audience that Grover Cleveland is doing these things to try and implement civil service reform. The point is that that this is it's amazing how perhaps even a lot in those times, right, even in the 1880s, there were probably still people who were like, Wow, you could pick someone of a different party to uh to represent an office. Uh and and that sort of surprise, I think, could could again give inform us as we are making these decisions, as we are debating the role and the future of the civil service, that uh then there were people back then who couldn't believe that people could be picked for qualifications. So maybe we shouldn't be as surprised when we we can't get past certain debates because there have been people, just countless people before us, before our time, who maybe have criticized a president before for picking someone of a different party to serve in that president's cabinet or in that president's administration. Number seven. Curtis really doesn't sound very pro-Congress in this speech. He gives it's funny, he gives President Cleveland a lot of credit, uh, but he doesn't seem to be giving Congress much credit on anything. Uh maybe that's just because of his own dealings with with different representatives. I guess in DC it does kind of make sense because uh there's there are definitely gonna be people who are gonna be much more on the presidency side of things than on the Congress side, and those Congress people are not gonna be as enthusiastic about the judicial folks. So when you go to DC, there's definitely this this uh this idea of like you know, pick pick your poison, pick your uh your your institution to root for. But Curtis doesn't seem very fond of members of Congress. Let me put it this way, I don't think he would be very much a champion for this institution after reading the speech. Uh what Curtis is saying here is that there are members of Congress who should not be playing a role in trying to remove civil servants and appointees. Okay, he sees this as a bit of an extension of the spoil system, and he probably sees a lot of these members of Congress coming into power because of the spoil system. So there is a little bit of that. I kind of wish he maybe maybe named some groups of members of Congress. I think that might have been helpful maybe for some of the members as they do their lobbying. Maybe they could look out for CERN members and maybe maybe try to lobby other members instead. But he basically denounces this idea of the legislative branch stepping on the toes of the executive branch, which is not something we talk a lot about nowadays, is usually the other way around, where the executive branch has been stepping on the toes of the legislative branch a lot more than the other way around. But that being said, I found this a very interesting point because at best, I'd say there's an arrogance element here where a member of Congress thinks he or she knows better than what the president's administration thinks, and goes around and says, I don't like this agency that I'm dealing with, or I don't like this person I'm dealing with. So I I should call for this person's removal. But I think Curtis does have a point here of saying that this is very much just again another demonstration of the spoil system. This idea that I guess members of Congress just feel like they're entitled to tell the president whom who should serve an administration and who shouldn't. Now, if someone from the executive branch has committed, say, an impeachable offense, and then that's a whole different point. But if if it but that's not what we're talking about here, and this does make a lot of sense to me when I read about this point, because members of Congress they they love to button a lot of things, and this is perhaps one of probably one of the more annoying things about Congress is just how extensive it can be in terms of how it it investigates the executive branch. But Curtis really makes this point trying to hammer this idea that if members of Congress really just need to stay in their lane, and the president really needs to be making those decisions, the president and the president's team, I should say. Um, and perhaps the cabinet, I think, should be playing that role. One of the things, regardless of what do you think, what people think about um just the the the uh the cool quite quite the episode of Doge in the last few months, is that I think a lot of cabinet secretaries at least publicly they probably uh would have said that they supported Doge and whatnot. But I would suspect though that secretly and privately, I think a lot of these cabinet members just wish that they had more agency in terms of picking out people or offices that they think didn't fit with the president's vision and have it that way rather than having someone coming out from outside a cabinet position telling that cabinet what positions they need to eliminate or how many. And uh I I think this is again this idea that when when in American politics, whenever there are political figures who try to who don't stay in their lane, they try to change lanes or try, you know, you've probably seen those people on the highways that try to change four lanes in in one go, right? Uh when you have people who are stepping out of line, what you generally do is you generate a lot of pushback. And a lot of that pushback is not gonna be very good. And that's why I think we have the checks and balances system, is so that when we have these issues like civil service reform, we have to understand this is civil service reform. It's not if the if Congress has its own problems with administrators and and bureaucrats, then the legislature should be reforming that. We are talking about the executive branch, and the executive branch needs to play a very active role in doing so. I think that was that was one of the other points that branch you off from this point about members of Congress. Number eight, removing competent civil servants en masse could result in a lot of confusion. And the Curtis emphasizes this point of how we need to have massive reform, not revolution. I found this very interesting. A lot of times, people uh politicians talk a big game. They always say, Oh, we're gonna we're gonna tear down this system, we're gonna redo this. And then when they get there, they realize it's a lot harder than it looks, doesn't it? That is why you build coalitions, right? Because when you're fighting as a coalition, you're fighting on multiple fronts, and you also have a literally a bigger team. And I think uh Curtis would definitely advise us in terms of civil service reform is that this is an incremental process. Even though Curtis is praising Cleveland a lot, and from what I'm reading and from my my fundamental understanding of Cleveland, I think Cleveland does get some credit. But that being said, I think Curtis recognizes that civil service reform is something that's gonna last for decades. It can be reversed very quickly by those very same people who benefited from the spoil system. So it's important to have those long-term visions and to not have a haphazard way of doing things because then you're gonna confuse people. And you just can't get people on board if you confuse people. That is why I think uh this idea of bringing people together, finding ways to have some kind of leadership, this sort of vision, not just going around and cutting things randomly, but rather having a targeted approach. What is it about the civil service reform that you that a president would like to focus on, maybe in this first term? Right? Like things like that, incremental steps, not a revolution. We're we're not the French, thank goodness. We're not the French, we're not gonna be beheading people. Okay, that that's not the way we do things. We we are the United States of America, we might have revolutionary visions, but the way we actually get change done is we do so incrementally. We reform, we don't revolutionize. The only time I think we've had a revolution was the American Revolution. That was it. The last point I'd like to make is uh a quote that he says at the end of the speech. Quote Whenever you hear of a good war, go to it. Quotes from another author, actually, but this is quite a good quote, I think, to end on. War in any form is ugly. And what uh certainly the most literal form of war is tragic, and it's and it's unfortunately unavoidable. We see that nowadays, from the Middle East to Eastern Europe. And unfortunately, war is going to pop up in some other part of the world, or perhaps the same parts of the world. So I I I kind of want you all to think about what what does it mean to have to fight in a good war? What sort of ideas, what sort of principles would you incorporate in part as part of a good war? Perhaps when you see a good war, you'll you'll just know it. Maybe you don't have to necessarily write things down or find that good war. You just know it when you see it. But I just found this a very interesting quote for Mr. Curtis to um to end the speech on regarding civil service. I'll just conclude here by saying that I think this speech illuminates a lot about Mr. Curtis. I hope you found this interesting. I hope that some of these elements here might be ideas that maybe we can incorporate in our conversations. Perhaps these are ways in which we need to better dissect our conversations. Maybe a lot of times we are having too broad of a conversation on something. And in fact, if we had just more of a closer discussion on some part of civil service reform or some type of foreign policy, maybe we can get to a better place in our political discourse. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to check out the links down in the show notes below. Have a great rest of your day and rest of your week. And remember, a day in America is always better when we are with our friends and fellows.