This problem is not limited to federal civil service but extends all through government. We pay a congressman $10,000 a year for a job that costs him $15,000 a year to hold under present conditions, exclusive of his campaign expenses, and then wonder why things get fouled up in Washington.
One of the commonest misconceptions has to do with "eating out of the public trough." By popular superstition, every officeholder, appointive or elective, is suspected of living by a process midway between cannibalism and vampirism, and classed with robbing the dead.
Truthfully, comrades, eating out of the public trough is mighty slim pickings. As wejust mentioned, it is slow bankruptcy to become a congressman. The situation with state legislators is much worse. A hundred dollars a month is high pay for a legislator or state senator; most states pay less than that. None of them pay a living wage, yet carrying out the duties of the office properly in these complicated days is a full-time job at nearer sixty hours a week than forty.
How do they live?
One of two ways: (a) honestly, through private income or private work done at the expense of public business - and the legislator's own health; it's too big a burden - or (b) by graft, either polite or shameless.
If the legislator is a lawyer, as too many of them are, polite graft is simple.35 Get your own lawyer to explain the process. Shucks! We might as well be frank. In most states (all states, as far as I know) a legislator who is also a lawyer may practice his profession on the side. He may receive legal fees, size not limited by professional code, for legal services, nature undefined. These fees may be legitimate fees, honestly earned; they may be "clean" graft - fees that fall in his lap because of his prominence as a public official but with no definite strings attached (there is a lot of that and it tends to make a man a tame dog without buying his vote outright); or it may be outright bribery, done in such a manner that it can never be prosecuted.36
If you should happen to get interested in cleaning up this particular evil in your home state - it's there! - the method is simple: Pay your legislators about $10,000 a year, which is what they should be worth for what you expect of them; forbid them to earn money through outside business; and institute some type of required publicity of their financial conditions on entering and leaving office, each term.
Simple to state, that is - you will find it hard to formulate in law and very hard to put over, not because of the opposition of the legislators but because of the blind and angry opposition of a great part of the population who hate to see a public official paid a living wage and hate still worse for him to be paid a salary commensurate with the responsibility of the office.38
Most strangely and wonderfully, in spite of the nominal salary and impossible working conditions, in spite of the feet that they are usually treated disgracefully by their constituents (who seem to feel that an elected legislator is something between a paroled convict and a chattel slave), a very large percentage of our legislators are earnest, honest, hardworking public servants doing their level best for their state and their constituents.
Why do they do it? Why would any man expose himself to such a fate? In England the profession of government is the highest and most respected occupation a gentleman can enter; in this country a man who dares to offer himself for the public service might as well kiss his reputation goodbye.
Then why do the honest men in public office (and their numbers are enormous compared with the crooks) ever chuck their hats in the ring? Or, once having had their fingers burned, why do they run for re-election? Is it a power complex? Are they publicity-mad exhibitionists? Is it some sort of a vice?
All of the above may enter into some cases to some degree, but I have a different theory as to the main reason. My theory is based on intimate knowledge of many legislators; it may be wrong but here it is, for what it's worth.
I think it's patriotism.
There is a strong conceit held by a large part of the population that it is somehow a little declasse to be an active partisan, that all really nice people are non-partisan. You will hear, "I vote for the man, not the party," said in a smug tone of voice, as if expecting for that pious sentiment at least one more star in the heavenly crown. Among middle-aged and elderly women this attitude is almost universal.
With rare exceptions, I vote for the party, not the man.
Bepartisan!
Be party regular. Vote the ticket in the fall of the party whose primary you voted in earlier in the year. Do all you can to enforce party discipline, not only among political workers, but, after election, on the part of your party office holders. Make 'em stick to the party's platform.40
Like all generalizations, this rule is subject to some exceptions, but the exceptions are very few, and you should spend several sleepless nights before deciding that a special circumstance merits an exception.
I can give you the thumb rule I use. I won't vote for a man whom I know to be an outright crook, or treasonable to our form of government, or, in my opinion, having some other moral defect so gross to make him a public menace in public office.
But I will vote for a dunderhead against a smart man of the party I am opposing.
After all, all I am asking of the poor devil is that he represent me; the dunderhead, if subject to party discipline, can do so; the smart man from the other party is already pledged to vote contrary to my wishes in the respects in which the two parties differ.
The belief that it is somehow more "idealistic" to ignore party lines arises from a failure to understand the nature of the democratic process. Democratic government is the art of reconciling the desire of every man to do just as he damn well pleases with the necessity of setting up rules and agreeing on programs for the general welfare of all and the protection of each individual.41
When there are 140,000,000 individuals concerned the procedure has to be more formalized and more complicated than it is when a single family decides what movie to attend. The process is necessarily as follows; no other system has ever been invented:
Individuals who are somewhat like-minded get together, discuss candidates and issues, iron out their differences, compromise, and agree on a program and a slate for die party primary. The primary they take part in is, of course, that of the party which, in their opinions, most nearly fits their needs. As a result of the primary they hope to make it still closer to what they want
Other groups have been doing the same thing. After the party primary the groups, successful and unsuccessful, get together in larger groups and make further compromises. Many, perhaps most, of the concessions are made by the successful groups to the unsuccessful ones, for the successful groups are acutely aware that they cannot win in the final election single-handed.
Somehow, a party platform is hammered out It is a conglomeration of compromises, representing an average of the hopes and beliefs and needs of many
people. No one is satisfied, but halfa loaf, etc. - they pledge support.
A campaign organization is worked out. The campaign manager is not infrequently the strongest unsuccessful rival of the head of the ticket; all through the organization you will find disappointed candidates and their supporters pitching in to try and elect the man they opposed a few weeks before. Hypocrisy? Hell, no! It's brotherhood and civilized cooperation.
After the election the compromising process starts all over again, for the successful candidates of each party are now public officials. From unlimited considerations, out of strongly opposed needs, and violent differences in viewpoint they must arrange programs, pass laws, produce an administration.
From this endless and involved series of compromises comes the government of these United States, and of our states and counties and cities.
There is no other way-foragovernmentoffreemen.