Welfare State before Civil Service Reform?

JohnJacques

Banned
Recently, I was reading a book which compared the political appeal of the post-New Deal welfare state to the appeal of the protective tariffs of the Gilded Age. Essentially, both provided a lot of government jobs and provided a lot of popularity to the party which supported it (until, of course, they didn't)

Now, I thought the major flaw with this comparison (other than the revenue versus spending bit) was that government jobs in the welfare state were not partisan. Most positions, after all, weren't appointed, but moved up through the ranks as with normal civil service jobs.

This got me to thinking- what if there was a welfare state type apparatus brought into the United States back when the spoils-system was alive and kicking? Its not too far fetched, as the US had seen the Freedmen's Bureau, attempts at federal education funding and guidelines and other countries like Prussia had health insurance and unemployment insurance programs in the era.

So, what if their had arisen a Gilded Age welfare state? What would it look like? And how could one get to such a thing? (I'm considering the idea for a TL)
 

ninebucks

Banned
Interesting idea.

Would each change in government result in mass sackings as the service is purged of the ideologically-incorrect and replaced by less competent members of the new party, or are we talking about a more moderate, more technocratic version of above - where you need to share the party affiliation to get an entry level job, and to be considered for promotions, but, if you remain competent and quiet, you can remain in the position you got from the old regime.

I imagine the latter would be workable, but people would quickly grow sick of the former.
 

JohnJacques

Banned
Interesting idea.

Would each change in government result in mass sackings as the service is purged of the ideologically-incorrect and replaced by less competent members of the new party, or are we talking about a more moderate, more technocratic version of above - where you need to share the party affiliation to get an entry level job, and to be considered for promotions, but, if you remain competent and quiet, you can remain in the position you got from the old regime.

I imagine the latter would be workable, but people would quickly grow sick of the former.

Well, really, its a mix between the two. If we see the mostly Republican dominance of the Gilded Age, then it is closer to the latter. People will stay in the system election to election, getting promotions and occasionally exerting factional dominance (but that will be small-scale and hardly noticeable). But if say, the Democrats come in, then there would be a mass sacking and a replacement of nearly everyone in the system.

Its what was seen in tariff administration, the postal service and basically, everything else in the federal government of the time. Its one of the quirks of American government- we used to have huge shifts in public administration based on the elections every four years.

And while you may think the populace as a whole would oppose the spoils-system, it was really only targetted IOTL by a very small coalition of the elite. The masses generally liked it (viewing it as a way to get ahead, as it awarded political machines, ward bosses and the like)
 
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