Many officeholders have told me in private that the system of refusing to have anything to do with patronage is the only one which is free from headaches and unnecessary loss of votes.

The reason is very simple. For every patronage job there are at least a dozen candidates with good claims - in their own minds, at least - for appointment on the score of political services rendered. That means one man whose loyalty, such as it is, may have been purchased by the appointment - and eleven who are almost certainly antagonized.

After a few terms of this a congressman finds himself surrounded by a sea of disappointed postmaster candidates, each anxious to elect his opponent.

Still, if you are going to be in politics, you will have to face up to the problem of patronage. If you steadfastly refuse to accept it yourself, someday you will find that the job of dispensing it has been laid in your lap. What to do will be discussed under "techniques."

The federal civil service is almost entirely free from the dishonesty which is so prevalent in state and local civil service. It need not concern you too much as it is, by and large, well run and moderately efficient. It is not free from politics; federal civil servants maintain quite a lobby in Washington, but it is almost entirely free from partisan politics. Their efforts run mostly to pressure to obtain larger appropriations, higher salaries, and bigger organizations.31

Senator Byrd seems to feel that this is one of the most important problems facing the Republic. I don't happen to think so. You will have to decide for yourself.

The worst thing wrong with the federal civil service is the fact that the salaries and working conditions are not sufficiently high to attract enough competent men in the more responsible administrative positions - a section head in agronomy, let us say, or a division supervisor in aerodynamics research, or a chief physicist for the Bureau of Standards.

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