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a particular race from the United States; prescribe the terms and conditions upon which certain classes of aliens may come to this country; establish regulations for sending out of the country such aliens as come here in violation of the law; and commit the enforcement of such provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to executive officers without judicial intervention, are principles firmly established by the decisions of this court." In Fok Young Yo v. United States, 185 U. S., 296, 304, 305, it was held that the decision of the collector of customs on the right of transit across the territory of the United States was conclusive, and, still more to the point, in Lem Moon Sing v. United States, 158 U. S., 538, where the petitioner for habeas corpus alleged facts which, if true, gave him a right to enter and remain in the country, it was held that a decision of the collector was final as to whether or not he belonged to the privileged class.

Therefore we

Due process of law does

not require

In view of the cases which we have cited it seems no longer open to discuss the question propounded as a new one. do not analyze the nature of the right of a person presenting him- judicial trial. self at the frontier for admission. But it is not improper to add a few words. The petitioner, although physically within our boundaries, is to be regarded as if he had been stopped at the limit of our jurisdiction and kept there while his right to enter was under debate. If, for the purpose of argument, we assume that the Fifth amendment 1 applies to him and that to deny entrance to a citizen is to deprive him of liberty, we nevertheless are of the opinion that with regard to him due process of law does not require a judicial trial. That is the result of the cases which we have cited and the almost necessary result of the power of Congress to pass exclusion laws. That the decision may be entrusted to an executive officer and that his decision is due process of law was affirmed and explained in Hishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S., 651, 660.

1 See above, p. 137.

The growth of the national administration.

83. The "Spoils System" in National Administration

It was early discovered that federal offices could be used reward friends and punish enemies without regard to adminis tive efficiency, and this practice steadily developed until, Andrew Jackson's day, it became an open and avowed rule politics. The pass to which the unhampered spoils system brou the national administration is described in the following rep to the Senate in 1882.

The growth of our country from 350,000 square miles to 4,000,0 the increase of population from 3,000,000 to 50,000,000, the ad tion of twenty-five States, imperial in size and capabilities, ha caused a corresponding development of the machinery and facu ties of the government. In the beginning - even so late as 1801 there were 906 post-offices; now there are 44,848. Then the were 69 custom-houses; now there are 135. Then the revenu were less than $3,000,000; now they are $400,000,000. Then ou ministers to foreign countries were 4; now they are 33. Then ou consuls were 63; now they are 728. Then less than 1,000 me sufficed to administer the government; now more than 100,000 ar needed. Then one man might personally know, appoint on thei merits, supervise the performance of their duties, and for sufficien cause remove all officers; now, no single human being, however great his intelligence, discrimination, industry, endurance, devotion, even if relieved of every other duty, can possibly, unaided, select and retain in official station those best fitted to discharge the many and varied and delicate functions of the government. It has come to pass that the work of paying political debts and discharging political obligations, of rewarding personal friends and whelmed by punishing personal foes, is the first to confront each President on assuming the duties of his office, and is ever present with him even to the last moment of his official term, giving him no rest and little time for the transaction of other business, or for the study of any higher or grander problems of statesmanship. He is compelled to give daily audience to those who personally seek place, or to the army of those who back them. He is to do what some

The

President

over

office

seekers.

predecessor of his has left undone, or to undo what others before him have done; to put this man up and that man down, as the system of political rewards and punishments shall seem to him to demand. Instead of the study of great questions of statesmanship, of broad and comprehensive administrative policy, either as it may concern this particular country at home, or the relations of this great nation to the other nations of the earth, he must devote himself to the petty business of weighing in the balance the political considerations that shall determine the claim of this friend or that political supporter to the possession of some office of profit or honor under him.

of the

The office of Chief Magistrate has undergone in practice a The radical change. The President of the Republic created by the perversion Constitution in the beginning, and the Chief Magistrate of to-day, President's are two entirely different public functionaries. There has

office.

up such a perversion of the duties of that high office, such a pros-
titution of it to ends unworthy the great idea of its creation, im-
posing burdens so grievous, and so degrading of all the faculties and
functions becoming its occupant, that a change has already come
in the character of the government itself, which, if not corrected,
will be permanent and disastrous. Thus hampered and beset,
the Chief Magistrate of this nation wears out his term and his life
in the petty services of party, and in the bestowal of the favors its
ascendency commands. He gives daily audience to beggars for
place, and sits in judgment upon the party claims of contestants.
The Executive Mansion is besieged, if not sacked, and its corri- The nation
dors and chambers are crowded each day with the ever-changing, by office
but never-ending throng. Every Chief Magistrate, since the evil seekers.
has grown to its present proportions, has cried out for deliverance.
Physical endurance, even, is taxed beyond its power. More than
one President is believed to have lost his life from this cause. The
spectacle exhibited of the Chief Magistrate of this great nation.
feeding, like a keeper, his flock, the hungry, clamorous, crowding
jostling multitude which daily gathers around the dispenser of
patronage, is humiliating to the patriotic citizen interested alone

humiliated

T

Congressmen beseiged by placehunters.

The Civil
Service
Commission.

in national progress and grandeur. Each President, whatever may be his political associations, however strong may be his personal characteristics, steps into a current, the force of which is constantly increasing. He can neither stem nor control it, much less direct his own course, as he is buffeted and driven hither and thither by its uncertain and unmanageable forces.

The malign influence of political domination in appointments to office is wide-spread, and reaches out from the President himself to all possible means of approach to the appointing power. It poisons the very air we breathe. No Congressman in accord with the dispenser of power can wholly escape it. It is ever present. When he awakes in the morning it is at his door, and when he retires at night it haunts his chamber. It goes before him, it follows after him, and it meets him on the way. It levies contributions on all the relationships of a Congressman's life, summons kinship and friendship and interest to its aid, and imposes upon him a work which is never finished and from which there is no release. Time is consumed, strength is exhausted, the mind is absorbed, and the vital forces of the legislator, mental, as well as physical, are spent in the never-ending struggle for offices.

84. The Civil Service Act

In order to remove a large number of routine and subordinate offices from the baneful influence of partisanship, Congress passed in 1883 an act authorizing the establishment of a system of examinations testing the fitness of candidates for certain classes of government positions. The clauses showing the general purpose of the act are given here:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President is authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, three persons, not more than two of whom shall be adherents of the same party, as Civil Service Commissioners, and said three Commissioners shall constitute the United States Civil Service Commission. Said Commissioners shall hold no other

official place under the United States. The President may remove any Commissioner; and any vacancy in the position of Commissioner shall be so filled by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, as to conform to said conditions for the first selection of Commissioners. The Commissioners shall each receive a salary of three thousand five hundred dollars a year. And each of said Commissioners shall be paid his necessary traveling expenses incurred in the discharge of his duty as a Commissioner.

of the

Commission

SEC. 2. That it shall be the duty of said Commissioners: First. To aid the President, as he may request, in preparing Duties suitable rules for carrying this act into effect, and when said rules shall have been promulgated it shall be the duty of all officers of the United States in the departments and offices to which any such rules may relate to aid, in all proper ways, in carrying said rules, and any modifications thereof, into effect.

Second. And, among other things, said rules shall provide and declare, as nearly as the conditions of good administration will warrant, as follows:

First, for open, competitive examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified hereunder. Such examinations shall be practical in their character, and so far as may be shall relate to those matters which will fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of the persons examined to discharge the duties of the service into which they seek to be appointed.

Second, that all the offices, places, and employments so arranged or to be arranged in classes shall be filled by selections according to grade from among those graded highest as the results of such competitive examinations.

Third, appointments to the public service aforesaid in the departments at Washington shall be apportioned among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia upon the basis of population as ascertained at the last preceding census. Every application for an examination shall contain, among other things,

P

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