Jeniffer electronic book

In the long run the effect of the spoils system was, of course, just the
opposite of that anticipated by the early Jacksonian Democrats. It
merely substituted one kind of office-holding privilege for another. It
helped to build up a group of professional politicians who became in
their turn an office-holding clique--the only difference being that one
man in his political life held, not one, but many offices. Yet the
Jacksonian Democrat undoubtedly believed, when he introduced the system
into the Federal civil service, that he was carrying out a desirable
reform along strictly democratic lines. He was betrayed into such an
error by the narrowness of his own experience and of his intellectual
outlook. His experience had been chiefly that of frontier life, in which
the utmost freedom of economic and social movement was necessary; and he
attempted to apply the results of this limited experience to the
government of a complicated social organism whose different parts had
very different needs. The direct results of the attempt were very
mischievous.


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