the time and the trouble to serve it efficiently; and this whether
he happens to be a mechanic or a banker, a telegraph operator or a
storekeeper. He has his own interests, his own business, and it is
difficult for him to spare the time to go around to the primaries, to
see to the organization, to see to getting out the vote--in short, to
attend to all the thousand details of political management.

On the other hand, the spoils system breeds a class of men whose
financial interest it is to take this necessary time and trouble. They
are paid for so doing, and they are paid out of the public chest.
Under the spoils system a man is appointed to an ordinary clerical or
ministerial position in the municipal, Federal, or State government, not
primarily because he is expected to be a good servant, but because he
has rendered help to some big boss or to the henchman of some big boss.
His stay in office depends not upon how he performs service, but upon
how he retains his influence in the party. This necessarily means that
his attention to the interests of the public at large, even though real,
is secondary to his devotion to his organization, or to the interest of
the ward leader who put him in his place. So he and his fellows attend
to politics, not once a year, not two or three times a year, like the
average citizen, but every day in the year. It is the one thing that
they talk of, for it is their bread and butter. They plan about it and
they scheme about it. They do it because it is their business. I do not
blame them in the least. I blame us, the people, for we ought to make
it clear as a bell that the business of serving the people in one of the
ordinary ministerial Government positions, which have nothing to do
with deciding the policy of the Government, should have no necessary
connection with the management of primaries, of caucuses, and
of nominating conventions. As a result of our wrong thinking and
supineness, we American citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose