Passage of the Pendleton Act

In 1871, following the Civil War, the size of the federal bureaucracy had grown to about 50,000 employees, many of whom had received their positions as a result of the patronage system initially put in place by Andrew Jackson. There were some unsuccessful efforts to reform the bureaucracy during the Hayes administration, and in the 1880 presidential campaign, James A. Garfield also pledged to change the hiring process for federal employees. Ironically, it was a frustrated job seeker that became, finally, the catalyst for change. In 1881, Charles Guiteau took out his frustration over not receiving a federal job by assassinating the newly elected Garfield, who had only served a few months in office. The push for reform was on.

Garfield's Republican vice president and successor, Chester A. Arthur, championed legislation proposed by George H. Pendleton (D-Ohio) to transform the patronage system into a merit-based system. (Arthur did this despite the fact that he had, himself, benefited from the patronage system in New York City.) Passage of the 1883 Civil Service Reform Act, also called the Pendleton Act, created the federal Civil Service.

The Pendleton Act was a three-pronged effort to create a federal bureaucracy staffed on the basis of merit, not patronage.

• The Act created a bipartisan civil service commission responsible for instituting a system of open, competitive examinations to aid in the hiring process.
• Federal employees joining this new civil service system were to be hired on the basis of their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
• Civil service employees were protected from being arbitrarily fired by their political masters.

At the time, only about 10 percent of federal employees were covered by civil service protections. However, the Pendleton Act not only set the stage for a merit-based federal bureaucracy, it echoed the reforms in some state and local governments as well. New York State enacted its merit system in 1883, and the state of Massachusetts and the city of Albany, New York, followed in 1884. The push for reforming the corrupt spoils system was on.

The attraction of protecting federal workers under the Civil Service umbrella did not escape later politicians. From the initial 10 percent of federal employees covered under the Civil Service System, subsequent congressional actions and executive orders have now extended coverage to all but a few thousand federal employees.