466 Chapter 13 | The BureaucracyThe Beginning of America’s Bureaucracy
From the Founding of the United States until the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, the
staff of the entire federal bureaucracy numbered at most in the low thousands. The small
size of the federal government during these years reflected Americans’ deep suspicion of
government, especially unelected officials. In the Declaration of Independence, in fact,
one of the charges against George III was that he had “erected a multitude of new offices
and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”^13
In these early years, there were only three executive departments (State, Treasury,
and War), along with a postmaster general,^14 and executive branch offices were formed
only when absolutely necessary. This small bureaucracy performed a very narrow
range of tasks. It collected taxes on imports and exports and delivered the mail. The
national army consisted of a small Corps of Engineers and a few frontier patrols. The
attorney general was a private attorney who had the federal government as one of his
clients. Members of Congress outnumbered civil servants in Washington, and the
president had very little staff at all.^15
Despite its small size, conflicts soon arose around control of the bureaucracy. The
legislation that established the departments of State, Treasury, and War allowed
the president to nominate the people in charge of these departments but made these
appointments subject to Senate approval. The same is true today for the heads of all
executive departments and many other presidential appointments.
The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 brought the first large-scale use of the spoils
system: people who had worked for Jackson’s campaign were rewarded with new
positions in the federal government (usually as local postmasters).^16 The spoils system
was extremely useful to party organizations, as it gave them a powerful incentive with
which to convince people to work for the party, and it was a particularly important tool
for Jackson. His campaign organization was at that time the largest ever organized.
The challenge facing the spoils system was ensuring that these government
employees, who often lacked experience in their new fields, could actually carry out
their jobs. The solution was to develop procedures for these employees that guided
them on exactly what to do even if they had little or no experience or training.^17 These
instructions became one of the earliest uses of standard operating procedures. They
ensured that the government could function even if large numbers of employees had
been hired in reward for political work rather than because of their qualifications.^18
As America expanded in size, so did the federal government, which saw an almost
eightfold increase in the bureaucracy between 1816 and the beginning of the Civil War
in 1861. This growth did not reflect fundamental changes in what the government did;
in fact, much of the increase came in areas such as the Post Office, which needed to serve
a geographically larger nation—and, of course, to provide “spoils” for party workers in
the form of government jobs.^19 Even by the end of the Civil War, the federal government
still had very little involvement in the lives of ordinary Americans. State and local
governments provided services such as education, public works, and welfare benefits, if
they were provided at all. The federal government’s role in daily life was limited to mail
delivery, the collection of import and export taxes, and work in a few other sectors.Building a New American State: The Progressive Era
Political developments in the second half of the nineteenth century transformed
America’s bureaucracy.^20 While the transformation began after the Civil War, theThis cartoon of a monument depicting
President Andrew Jackson riding a pig
decries his involvement in the spoils
system, which allowed politicians to
dole out government service jobs in
return for political support.Full_14_APT_64431_ch13_454-487.indd 466 16/11/18 1:43 PM