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Under President George
Washington , the bureaucracy remained small enough to accomplish only the necessary tasks at hand.
For the early origins of the U.S. bureaucracy see Michael Nelson. 1982. “A Short, Ironic History of American National Bureaucracy,”
The Journal of Politics 44 No. 3: 747–78. Washington’s tenure saw the creation of the Department of State to oversee international issues, the Department of the Treasury to control coinage, and the Department of War to administer the armed forces. The employees within these three departments, in addition to the growing postal service, constituted the major portion of the federal bureaucracy for the first three decades of the republic (
[link] ). Two developments, however, contributed to the growth of the bureaucracy well beyond these humble beginnings.
The first development was the rise of centralized party politics in the 1820s. Under President Andrew Jackson, many thousands of party loyalists filled the ranks of the bureaucratic offices around the country. This was the beginning of the
spoils system , in which political appointments were transformed into political patronage doled out by the president on the basis of party loyalty.
Daniel Walker Howe. 2007.
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 334. Political
patronage is the use of state resources to reward individuals for their political support. The term “spoils” here refers to paid positions in the U.S. government. As the saying goes, “to the victor,” in this case the incoming president, “go the spoils.” It was assumed that government would work far more efficiently if the key federal posts were occupied by those already supportive of the president and his policies. This system served to enforce party loyalty by tying the livelihoods of the party faithful to the success or failure of the party. The number of federal posts the president sought to use as appropriate rewards for supporters swelled over the following decades.
The second development was industrialization, which in the late nineteenth century significantly increased both the population and economic size of the United States. These changes in turn brought about urban growth in a number of places across the East and Midwest. Railroads and telegraph lines drew the country together and increased the potential for federal centralization. The government and its bureaucracy were closely involved in creating concessions for and providing land to the western railways stretching across the plains and beyond the Rocky Mountains. These changes set the groundwork for the regulatory framework that emerged in the early twentieth century.
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