Word: ramspeck
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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...
...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...
...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...
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...
...supplemental defense appropriation, the Excess Profits &-Amortization Bill. Conferees had ironed out differences between the House's version of the Excess Profits Bill and the Senate's. Congress hoped to pass it this week. Passed by the Senate and sent to conference was the Ramspeck Bill, which permits the President to fold into the Civil Service system approximately 200,000 Government employes through noncompetitive examinations. Congressmen were beginning to see some hope of adjournment when, at week's end, came news of the Axis-Japan pact...