The good old days of patronage

“Gimme your mop. You’re through.”

I was standing in a hall in the Stratton building about 9:30 on a weeknight. The shift was ending and I had been stopped by the new boss.

He hit me with that message, took my mop and turned back to his office. After four years, my job as night janitor for the Secretary of State was at an end.

I wsn’t surprised, or shocked or angry. You see, that’s how things were. It was a patronage job.

When I began teaching sixth grade at Little Flower School back in 1967, I soon realized that though it was my first full-time job, the pay wasn’t going to be enough.

So I told my grandfather about my problem. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

The next week I had the job under Paul Powell. Starting about 5 o’clock each night I swept the floor of an area in that office building. Next I emptied the wastebaskets and cleaned the ashtrays. Then we all laid low until quitting time at nine o’clock. For that I got a full-time salary.

I have had other state jobs since, including the directorships of two big agencies under the governor. All those jobs required a lot more work, but none required as much influence to get as did my janitor job.

My clout was my Grandfather Bradley, who had been a Democratic county chairman since the administration of Governor Henry Horner during the Depression.

But Paul Powell died, with at least $800,000 in cash stuffed in shoe boxes in his hotel room. His successor, lacking Mr. Powell’s flamboyance, was defeated in the next election. Two weeks after the new guy was sworn in, I got the ax.

Back then transitions were very different from the one happening now in Springfield.

Since my grandfather’s county was Menard, and since New Salem State Park was in Menard, when the Democrats had the governor’s office, my grandfather got to pick all the park employees.

And when the Republicans got in, Grandpa’s guys were fired and a whole new crew took the jobs.

He also got to choose the state cop for Menard County. And that is where things started changing.

During Gov. Stevenson’s term the reformers got a law passed putting state troopers under a merit system. No longer would the parties be able to choose “hacks.” The policemen were to be chosen on merit, experience, competence, that sort of thing.

For most of the country’s history the philosophy had been, “To the victor belong the spoils.” And so...the patronage system.

The result was that a change of parties at the top in state government meant a huge movement of recently canned employees leaving Springfield and moving back home while new hires were moving in. Not only was it a way to reward loyal campaign workers, but it assured that employees would be attentive to, and would respond to, directions from the top.

But slowly the public rejected the system. Unions came along to protect employee rights. And finally federal and state lawsuits like the Rutan case ended the power of officeholders to hire and fire at will.

It can be argued that ending patronage made the bureaucracy less accountable and significantly weakened the two-party system. Certainly it hurt real estate agents in Springfield. The turnover of houses now is nothing like it was in the old days.

Now a relatively small number of top policy jobs can be filled by patronage. The vast majority of state employees are protected by union contracts or civil service rules.

Yes things were different then. And I am not sure that everything is better.

After all, if the patronage system hadn’t ended my job, I might still be there in the Stratton Building...cleaning up state government. We all know it still needs it.

Phil Bradley of Springfield has held a variety of state jobs. He is watching the transition with the bemused enjoyment of an outsider.