The Postmaster’s Patronage Problem: Civil Service Warns Port Townsend
Postmaster McNamara threatened to replace Port Townsend’s post office staff with loyal Democrats. The Civil Service Commission warned that patronage could cost him personally—and cited a Pennsylvania postmaster who paid $600 out of pocket.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Washington City, Dec. 17.—[Special.]—When Chairman Lyman, of the United States Civil Service Commission, was shown the Port Townsend dispatch in the Post-Intelligencer, “Postmaster McNamara a spoils man,” he read it through from beginning to end. While a sardonic smile played over his features, “We have already said,” he remarked, “I suppose he can do just what he says he will do if he wants to dismiss the present force of employees in the office and put simon-pure Democrats in their places. But if he does it, it will prove to be a very expensive luxury for him.”
There have been no prosecutions, convictions or heavy fines imposed upon postmasters for such violations of the civil service rules as this item states, but there was a case in Pennsylvania where a postmaster illegally appointed a subordinate, and the result was that he had to pay the employee out of his own pocket, which cost him about $600. This might be considered, perhaps, the same as a fine. A similar case happened at Kansas City not long ago. If the Port Townsend postmaster does what it is said he will do, the result can be no other than the same in his case. The government will not pay men who are improperly appointed, and appointees must be properly certified by the secretary of the local board of civil service examiners.
The Port Townsend postoffice has been under civil service rules less than a year. The first register was in February last, when Postmaster Learned was called upon to furnish a roster of the men in the office. From these on the 1st of June a local board of examiners was appointed. An eligible register was made at the office in July. On September 13 the monthly report of changes for August was returned because the name of O. Morris, which proved to be ineligible, had not been properly certified for appointment. Mr. Learned explained that a vacancy had occurred, and there being no names on the eligible register he had appointed Mr. Morris. But the allowance for clerk hire had been reduced in that month from $2,000 to $1,400. Mr. Morris had been kept in office only one week. From this it may be seen how close a watch the civil service commission keeps. Mr. McNamara will find that his “traditional democracy” will have to bow to the new order of things. As yet there has been no correspondence in relation to the new postmaster.
“But if he does it, it will prove to be a very expensive luxury for him.”
The fight over whether a new postmaster could reward political loyalists with federal jobs was an early test of civil service reform in Washington. The same tension—merit rules versus patronage—still shapes how public jobs are filled and how quickly a new administration can remake an agency.
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