Mr. Ramspeck Wins

Last week no cheering mobs chaired Robert Ramspeck on their shoulders; no medals, no free radio time, no newsreel hullabaloo greeted his achievement. The civil servants of the U. S. do not inspire public frenzy. Theirs is not to do or die, to show imagination or initiative. Theirs is to get to work at 9 a.m. and quit at 4:30 p.m., like automatons, and to draw their pay until death parts them from the payroll. They are not inspiring Government servants--but they are a lot better than unfit spoilsmen who fill Government offices with ward heelers and live by political preferment.

All that Mr. Ramspeck had done last week was to win a final victory for the civil service over the spoils system. It came about because a slender, well-dressed Congressman from Decatur, Ga., Robert Ramspeck, 50 years old, looking 35, is a mild, gentle, quiet man who doesn't know when he is licked.

A year and a half ago Bob Ramspeck went up against the spoilsmen--masters of legislative sabotage. He had drafted a bill empowering the President to cover into the civil service by examinations some 200,000 job holders in 26 Federal agencies; to extend departmental Washington pay scales to the field service. This was something like combined atheism and blasphemy at a religious revival. The spoilsmen got busy at killing the bill. They gave it the works: delay, amendments that subverted its whole purpose, points of order, objections, pigeonholings, pressure. Ramspeck resurrected the measure, answered the lies, used a pulmotor of persuasion on fainthearts, avoided personalities, stuck grimly to the merits of merit.

Fortnight ago, the long fight ended in fireworks on the House floor. Gentle Bob Ramspeck, victory in sight, got tough. He took the floor for 18 explosive minutes, with his Georgia drawl grown corrosive, laid about him with two years' pent-up wrath. When he was through, spoilsmen's bodies were figuratively heaped around him. In a daze the House passed the bill, 206-to-139. With Mr. Ramspeck to the White House last week must have marched the ghosts of all the Presidents who have been harassed to desperation by appointments; President James A. Garfield, slain by a disappointed office seeker; perhaps even the shadow of Louis XIV, who said: "Every time I fill a vacant office I make 100 malcontents and one ingrate."

Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill with Robert Ramspeck's fountain pen. Then Ramspeck cautioned reporters not to expect miracles; the measure's full force will take some four years to effect. But Ramspeck estimated that about 25% of those Government workers now employed will fail to pass the required noncompetitive examination, must then be dropped within six months. Thus the Government will slough off some 50,000 workers as incompetent or unfit, 5% of all U. S. employes.

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