William Jennings Bryan Quotes

It is a handicap to any man to succeed a member of his own party as President. He has little patronage with which to reward his personal supporters.

After your first victory as New York Governor you gave jobs worth $3,000 to $20,000 per year to your friends and compatriots, and I returned to my garret and my crust, and my desperate battle with pecuniary obligations.

No man who ever held the office of President would congratulate a friend on obtaining it. He will make one man ungrateful, and a hundred men his enemies, for every office he can bestow.

Throughout most of Chicago's history, the Civil Service Commission has been enmeshed in partisan politics. Thousands of city employees were given temporary appointments and kept in this status, year after year, in order to keep them loyal partisan political workers.

I favor putting the responsibility for the dispensing of patronage squarely on the organizations [parties]. Let the organizations be held strictly accountable for the endorsements. After the appointment is made the appointee ought to fit the job, so that the appointing power can rest assured that the work entrusted to him will be done right.

What we called the Civil Service was, in the main, merely a mass of Republican political appointees frozen into office by act of Congress.

There can be no complete and permanent reform of the civil service until public opinion emancipates congressmen from all control and influence over government patronage ... No proper legislation is to be expected as long as members of Congress are engaged in procuring offices for their constituents

If I cannot find qualified Republicans, I am going to appoint Democrats.

I will devote none of my time to developing laws to increase my own patronage and multiply canvassers [electors] in my favor.

[Martin] Van Buren says he considers it as a misfortune when any office to be filled by him becomes vacant, and thinks patronage rather a burden than a benefit.

A President cannot call men from all parts of the country during the time between his nomination and his election, seek their advice, their counsel, their service, their cooperation in his personal behalf and in behalf of the party ... and also tell them in the same breath, to see the Secretary of War, the Attorney General and the Postmaster General about a presidential nomination.

Take from the United States the appointment of postmasters and let the towns elect them, and you deprive the Federal Government of half a million defenders.

[We Democrats] see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victors belong the spoils.

If one wants to get high paying jobs, one ought to depend on those who are in power.

Every President does it. It goes back to George Washington. I can’t say that past Administrations have asked the same questions, but the end result is the same—you put people on boards that you want.

In former days all appointments to the bureaucracy were made by the political party in power. When that party was defeated, all the bureaucrats in office were immediately thrown out and their places were filled by faithful heelers of the victorious party. It was not a very noble system. It was not conducive to efficient governmental administration…. It did have certain virtues, however. It prevented anyone from becoming a bureaucrat for life and so losing completely the point of view of the man on the street. It also permitted the elected officials to reward their political workers by changing, instead of increasing, the bureaucracy.

Appointments to office were not to be made nor expected merely as rewards for partisan services, nor merely on the nomination of members of Congress, as being entitled in any respect to the control of such appointments.

Even a President like Mr. McKinley, who has more personal friends than any other man in his party, cannot know who should fill every office to which he must make an appointment, even if he were disposed, as President McKinley was not, to ignore any of the party leaders. But President McKinley has held to one rule throughout his dealings with the party leaders in making appointments, and that is that he must have a suitable man for every vacancy. When a suitable man was not presented, the party leader would be given, politely but positively, the alternative of endorsing a man that the President could find without his assistance.

I beg to present to your attention the case of Mr. Samuel Allen, a great friend of ours [The Democrats], who is in great need of a small appointment under your department for which he has applied. He would be very content with something for a time of not very high rank …. His is an entirely reliable man, and I should be personally glad if you could help him.

I wasn't a party apparatchik. I think too many of today's people in both parties come forward, university, 'What party will I join? Oh, yes, I know somebody here. I might get a job working for this member or for that shadow minister or minister.'

A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.

The success of any executive measure must now be bought by the use of political patronage in influencing the action of legislators.

About one-half of the members of Congress are seekers for office at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one-half have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives.

I will not dismiss, or drop from Executive offices, able and faithful political opponents to provide for my own partisans.

Bureaucracy is widespread in the unemployed movement.... There is direct appointment and removals of Unemployed Council functionaries by the Party committees. These functionaries are responsible not to the masses but to the Party committees.