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The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage.
The 1883 law only applied to federal jobs: not to the state and local jobs that were the main basis for political machines. Ethical degeneration was halted by reform in civil service and municipal reform in the Progressive Era, which led to structural changes in administrative departments and changes in the way the government managed public ...
Public support in the United States for civil service reform strengthened following the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield. [24] The United States Civil Service Commission was created by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which was passed into law on January 16, 1883.
President Garfield's successor, President Chester A. Arthur, took up the cause of Civil Service reform and was able to lobby Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883. The Pendleton law was passed in part following a public outcry over the assassination of President Garfield.
After the assassination of President James A. Garfield, he wrote and helped pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. The act required many civil service hires to be based on merit rather than political connections. Passage of the act lost him support in Ohio and he was not nominated for a second term in the Senate.
As a result, the lame-duck session of Congress was more amenable to civil service reform; the Senate approved Pendleton's bill 38–5 and the House soon concurred by a vote of 155–47. [151] Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law on January 16, 1883. [151]
During late 1882 and early January 1883, Blair attached an amendment to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act that prohibited hiring habitual drunkards to federal government positions, reflecting his effort to combat alcohol abuse. [8] However, he did not vote on the final passage of the Pendleton Act. [9]
The term was used particularly in politics of the United States, where the federal government operated on a spoils system until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 due to a civil service reform movement. Thereafter the spoils system was largely replaced by nonpartisan merit at the federal level of the United States.