American public administration did not invent the concept of a creating a public service that would be based on merit. Would-be reformers of American government in the late nineteenth century not only experience but also were fond of noting that possessing such systems borrowed from the European was an essential step in enlightenment" for the United States if it was to develop as a civilized nation The first real steps toward creating a modern state of public administration in the United States were taken following the Civil War and at the heart was the struggle to limit the spoils system of rewarding political party members with government job appointments as opposed to establishing a civil service system where appointments and tenure were based on merit While federal civil service reform is generally dated from the post-Civil War period, the political roots of the reform effort go back much earlier-to the beginning of the republic. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to face the problem of a philosophically hostile bureaucracy While sorely pressed by his supporters to remove Federalist officeholders and replace them with Republican par tisans, Jefferson was determined not to remove officials for political reasons alone. He maintained in a letter in 1801 to William Findley that "Malconduct is a just ground of removal, mere difference o political opinion is not. With occasional defections from this principle, even by Jefferson himself, thi policy was the norm rather than the exception down through the administration of Andrew Jackson President Jackson's rhetoric on the nature of public service was far more influential than his adminis trative example. In claiming that all men, especially the newly enfranchised who did so much to elect him, should have an equal opportunity for public office, Jackson played to his plebeian constituency and put the patrician civil service on notice that they had no natural monopoly o public office. The spoils system, used only modestly by Jackson, flourished under his successors. The doctrine of rota tion of office progressively prevailed o the earlier notion of stability in office. Depending on your point of view. the advent of modern merit systems is either an economi political, or moral development. Economic historians would maintain that the demands of industrial xpansion-a dependable postal service, a viable transportation network, and so on-necessitated a government service based on merit. Political analysts could argue rather persuasively that it was the demands of an expanded suffrage and democratic rhetoric that sought to rep favoritism with merit. Economic and political considerations are so intertwined that it is impossible to say which fac tor is the true origin of the merit system. The moral impetus behind reform is even more difficult to define. As moral impulses tend to hide economic and political motives the weight of moral concern undiluted by other considerations is impossible to measure. Nevertheless, the cosmetic effect of moral ertones was of significant aid to the civil service reform movement, because it accentuated the social legitimacy of the reform proposals With the ever-present impetus of achieving maximum public services for minimum tax dollars, business interests were quite comfortable in supporting civil service reform, one of a variety of strate gies they used to have power pass from the politicos to themselves. The political parties of the time were almost totally dependent for financing on assessments made on the wages of their members in public office. With the decline of patronage, the parties had to seek new funding sources, and American business was more than willing to assume this new financial burden its concomitant influence Civil service reform was both an ideal-an integral symbol of a larger national effort to establish a new form of more responsive government; and an institutional effort-a series of internal reforms