Publications: Massachusetts Merit System Reporter: Volume 10, issue 2: pages 155-157

Origins of the
Massachusetts Civil
Service Commission
(1884-1938)

by Alexander Macmillan

   Civil Service laws in the United States evolved in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the practice of patronage or the "spoils system:" the rewarding of politically active individuals with government positions in return for continued support. Spurred by a wave of public revulsion against the practice following the assassination of President James Garfield by a disappointed office-seeker, Congress passed the Pendelton Act in 1883, described as an act to "regulate and improve the Civil Service of the United States."

   The fundamental goals of the Commission thus established, (under the early leadership of a young reformer from New York named Theodore Roosevelt,) were to reduce the corrosive effects of political patronage and cronyism, to provide for continuity in government service despite the disruptions of the electoral process, and to develop a cadre of professional public administrators immune from political influence. The Act included provisions for competitive examinations, security from political harassment, and insulation from politically motivated dismissal.

   Following the lead of New York, Massachusetts became the second state to adopt a merit system in public employment. Signed into law by Governor Robinson in 1884, the Massachusetts Civil Service Act was called by the influential Boston Transcript "the most important act which has passed the legislature for years." Civil Service, opposed by the adherents of the Democrat, General Ben Butler, who was defeated for Governor by Robinson in 1883, was essentially a Republican reform.

   The apostles of the national movement, organized as the Civil Service Reform Association, included numerous, worthy citizens of Boston and Cambridge who were known politically as "Mugwumps." Locally, the legislative effort was pushed by a group of young lawyers with ties to Harvard: Henry Cabot Lodge, Moorefield Story, Charles Theodore Russell, Leverett Saltonstall, Richard Henry Dana, and Josiah Quincy, Jr. [156]

   From the moment of its passage, the Civil Service law came under regular attack from those who wished to limit its application, including organized groups of veterans, first of the Civil War, and later of the Spanish-American War. The Civil Service Reform Association continued to battle what it termed the "unholy combination of spoilsmen and veterans preference supporters" throughout the balance of the nineteenth century and the well into the twentieth.

   Led by its indomitable Secretary, Arthur Brooks, and Marian C. Nichols, Secretary of the Women's Auxiliary formed in 1901, the Association was generally successful in staving off absolute veterans preference, except for Civil War veterans, until forced to accept a major "compromise" on this score during the Governorship of Calvin Coolidge, following World War 1.

   Indeed, the Women's Auxiliary, loosely affiliated with the State Federation of Women's Clubs and including in its relatively small number "a group of distinguished names whose opposition would damage any legislator," became the backbone of the Civil Service reform movement. It possessed the zeal, the connections and the intelligence necessary to secure favorable press coverage for its defensive efforts.

   The Commission itself, and particularly its early leadership, mirrored the reform constituency which help to establish it. Until the 1930's, more than half the Commission members were graduates of Harvard, and frequently of Harvard Law School as well. Charles T. Russell, Jr., of Cambridge, an initial appointee who served for nearly twenty years, usually as Chairman, until his death in 1903, Charles Warren, who served as Chairman from 1905 to 1911, Dana Payson, a Brookline Selectman who served as Chairman from 1919 to 1927, and his successor, E.H. Goodwin, who served as Chairman from 1927 to 1931, were all Harvard-educated lawyers. Goodwin also served as Secretary of the National Civil Service Reform League and as Secretary of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

   In the 1930's a sea change in the political landscape, locally as well as nationally, resulted in the political decline of the earlier, upperclass reform group which had supported Civil Service. The work of the latest in a series of special legislative commissions, dominated by employee groups and elected political officials, culminated, in 1938, in a comprehensive revamping of the system. The number of Commissioners was increased from three to five, and terms were extended from three years to five years - a framework still utilized. Despite the urging of some members of the special commission, the Legislature failed to grant the Civil Service Commission the power to review allegations of improper removal - heard exclusively in the district courts since the turn of the Century.

   Other steps were taken to transform the anti-patronage, "policing" nature of Civil Service into a supposedly modern, more flexible and efficient personnel system, with an emphasis on recruitment and the development of scientifically determined "standards" for employment and promotion. It must be noted that the latest "reforms" included increased preferences for veterans and local residents, and numerous proprietary changes sought by current government employees, who were seeking to protect their status and seniority rights, at the expense of "outsiders." [157]

   In the egalitarian 1930's, entrance requirements were also generally eased. Maximum age, minimum height-and-weight, and educational standards were modified or eliminated altogether. To a degree not matched in the Federal Civil Service, or in most other states, "practical experience" could now be substituted for educational training.

   As an unintended consequence, it became more difficult to eliminate qualifying or promotional examinations and the system was to become, if anything, more rigid, costly and bureaucratic than before. Little was done to eliminate so-called "provisional" or "temporary" appointments, which in the view of some provided needed flexibility but which, in the view of others, provided a back-door means of getting political friends into office.

   Despite this major effort, in 1938, to reform the Civil Service system based on the first fifty years of our experience with it, the tension among those favoring greater flexibility in personnel matters, particularly at the municipal level, those deeming it vital to establish clear, uniform, statewide standards in order to recruit able school and college graduates into public service, the veterans groups, and the wary public employees themselves, remained unresolved.