The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (ch. 27, 22 Stat. 403) is an 1883 United States federal law that established the United States Civil Service Commission, which placed most federal employees on the merit system and marked the end of the so-called "spoils system." Drafted during the Chester A. Arthur administration, the Pendleton Act served as a response to President James Garfield's assassination by a disappointed office seeker. The Act was passed into law on January 16, 1883. The Act was sponsored by Senator George H. Pendleton, Democrat of Ohio, and written by Dorman Bridgeman Eaton, a staunch opponent of the patronage system who was later first chairman of the United States Civil Service Commission. The most famous commissioner was Teddy Roosevelt (1889-95). The law only applied to federal jobs: not to the state and local jobs that were the basis for political machines. At first it covered very few jobs but there was a ratchet provision whereby outgoing presidents could lock in their own appointees by converting their jobs to civil service. After a series of party reversals at the presidential level (1884, 1888, 1892, 1896), the result was that most federal jobs were under civil service. One result was more expertise and less politics. An unintended result was the shift of the parties to reliance on funding from business, since they could no longer depend on patronage hopefuls. The act also prohibits soliciting campaign donations on Federal government property.
Further reading
- Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883 (1961)
- Paul P. Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (1958).
