Pendleton Civil Service Act

For most of the nineteenth century, federal government jobs were distributed as political rewards — a practice known as the spoils system, from the maxim "to the victor belong the spoils." Every change of administration meant a wholesale turnover of the federal workforce, from postmasters in small towns to customs collectors in major ports, regardless of competence or experience. The system produced spectacular corruption and a government staffed by political loyalists rather than qualified administrators. It also, in 1881, produced the assassination of a president. Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield because he felt entitled to a consular appointment that the new administration had denied him.

Garfield's assassination energized the reform movement that had been pushing for merit-based federal hiring for years. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, signed by President Chester Arthur on January 16, 1883, created the Civil Service Commission and established competitive examinations as the basis for hiring in a defined category of federal positions. At passage it covered only about 10 percent of federal jobs; subsequent presidents expanded its reach through executive order, and by the early twentieth century the majority of federal positions were covered.

The act's passage was one of the Gilded Age's genuine reform achievements — and it was signed by Chester Arthur, a man who had built his entire career on the spoils system as Collector of the Port of New York, one of the most patronage-rich positions in the country. His conversion to reform, widely attributed to personal transformation after Garfield's death, surprised his political allies and infuriated the party bosses who had made him. The modern federal civil service — with its stability, expertise, and political insulation — descends directly from the Pendleton Act.