What Civil Service reform demands, is simply that the business part of the Government shall be carried on in a sound, business-like manner.  This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common-sense there should be no two opinions about it.  And the condition of things to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves.  In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that viciousness and absurdity home to our own minds unless we contemplate it as reflected in the mirror of a simile.

Imagine, then, a bank, the stockholders of which, many in number, are divided into two factions—­let us call them the Jones party and the Smith party—­who quarrel about some question of business policy, as, for instance, whether the bank is to issue currency or not.  The Jones party is in control, but the Smith men persuade over to their side a sufficient number of Jones men to give them—­the Smith men—­a majority at the next stockholders’ meeting.  Thus they succeed in getting the upper hand.  They oust the old board of directors, and elect a new board consisting of Smith men.  The new Smith board at once remove all the officers, president, cashier, tellers, book-keepers, and clerks, down to the messenger boys—­the good and the bad alike—­simply because they are Jones men, and fill their places forth-with with new persons who are selected, not on the ground that they have in any way proved their fitness for the positions so filled, but simply because they are Smith men; and those of the Smith men who have shown the greatest zeal and skill in getting a majority of votes for the Smith party are held to have the strongest claims for salaried places in the bank.  The new men struggle painfully with the duties novel to them until they acquire some experience, but even then, it needs in many instances two men or more to do the work of one.

In the course of events dissatisfaction spreads among the stockholders with the Smith management, partly shared by ambitious Smith men who thought themselves entitled to reward in the shape of places and salaries, but were “left out in the cold.”  Now the time for a new stockholders’ meeting arrives.  After a hot fight the Jones party carries the day.  Its ticket of directors being elected, off go the heads of the Smith president, the Smith cashier, the Smith tellers, the Smith bookkeepers, and clerks, to be replaced by true-blue Jones men, who have done the work of the campaign and are expected to do more of it when the next election comes.  And so the career of the bank goes on with its periodical changes of party in power at longer or shorter intervals, and its corresponding clean sweeps of the bank service, with mismanagement and occasional fraud and peculation as inevitable incidents.