Of the three sources of income from politics, only one remains to be considered—the non-legislative but salaried offices with which the politician may be rewarded for his pains. This is the first and surest means by which the party keeps its great and indispensable army of retainers contentedly at work. And here the familiar evils enter in which are so often held up for discussion in Germany. An American reformer, in criticizing the condition of the parties, is very apt not to distinguish between the giving out of offices to professional politicians as rewards and the later corrupt using of these offices by their incumbents. And as soon as the politician receives an income from the public treasury, the reformer will cry “stop thief.” The so-called “spoils system,” by which the federal offices in the patronage of the President are distributed to those who have worked hardest in the interests of the victorious party, will occupy our attention when we come to the political problems of the day. We shall have then to mention the advantages and disadvantages of civil service reform. But it must be said right here that, however commendable this reform movement may be in many respects, and in none more than in the increased efficiency which it has effected in the public service, nevertheless the spoils system cannot be called dishonourable, and no one should characterize professional politicians as abominable reprobates because they are willing to accept civil positions as rewards from the party for which they have laboured.
It is a usage which has nothing to do with the corrupt exploitation of office, and the German who derives from it the favourite prejudice against the political life of the United States must not suppose that he has thereby justified the German conception of office. Quite on the contrary, no one ever expects the German government to bestow offices, titles, or orders on members of the political opposition, to confirm, for instance, an independent for the position of Landrat or a social democrat for city councillor, while co-operation in the plans of the government never goes unrewarded. Above all, a German never looks on his official salary as a sort of present taken from the public treasury, but as the ordinary equivalent of the work which he does, while the American has a curious conception of the matter quite foreign to the German, which is the ground for his contempt of the “spoils system.” To illustrate by a short example: a state attorney who had been elected to the same office time after time, was asked to renew his candidacy at the coming elections. But he declined to do so, and explained that he had been supported for twenty years out of the public funds, and that it was therefore high time for him to earn his own living by the ordinary practice of law. A German cannot understand this conception, traditional though it is in America, but he can easily see that the man who shares such views as to public salaries will naturally consider it an act of plunder when the party in power distributes the best public posts to its own followers.