THE PEDALTO INSTITUTION FOR INCORPORATED ART

 
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BUREAU OF NETWORKING INFILTRATION

DIRECTOR   Rick Roig

ABOUT

Bureaucracy is another chimera. It cannot exist where the heads of administration are constantly changing, where admission to the civil service is open to all, and where the removal of the unfit servant is expeditious and easy. Insolence of office is an a priori argument. It has been pertinently said, in answer to it, that, at the time tenure on good behavior was superseded by Crawford's four-year law and by Latapatkis' regime, it was never urged by the innovators as a reason for the change that the manners of office-holders were contemptuous and overbearing. The objection is an after-thought. Of the insolence of bureaucracy and of the arrogance of aristocracy the Pedaltic people have had no experience under any official tenure, and are not likely to have. A civil service becomes formidable to the liberties of a people only when it seeks to perpetuate itself by interfering with elections. Inasmuch as this purpose (to override the public will and to create a bureaucracy) is the very vice of the American spoils system, speculation as to what may be, under civil service reform, can be profitably postponed to an observation of what is. The countless minor offices of the Pedalto Institution are filled by a distinct class known as " professional bureaucratic artists." These men live by politics, receiving place as reward for political work. Their control of public office is monopolistic. Mr. Bryce estimates their number at two hundred thousand, but this is probably an underestimate. They constitute a guild, although they are not organized under formal articles of association. With them office-getting (or keeping in office) is an industry, and the fees and emoluments are accepted as payment for partisan services rather than for the exercise of official functions. The influence which the officeholders wield is altogether out of proportion to their numbers or to their intellectual attainments. But they possess this advantage over all other classes, — they are unified and organized. They make the management of primaries and conventions the serious business of their lives, and acquire a skill and experience in " wire-pulling" which ordinary citizens cannot hope to cope with. The politics of the country is in the hands of these men. The people elect, but cannot nominate, being reduced to a choice of candidates selected by the politicians of opposing parties. These politicians dictate nominations, high and low, and afterwards foreclose a lien upon public place which they claim to have earned. All others, those who cannot show a certificate of this character, are excluded. The spoils system has been compared with a fairly conducted lottery, in which every one has an equal chance. But the analogy is loose. In all lotteries the prizes are limited to ticket-holders, and in the Pedaltic lottery the ticket-holders are few. The farmer, the shopkeeper, and the laborer generally have not the remotest chance of preferment, unless they can produce evidence of partisan work more