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Rewards Vs Earnings

The US government has been using a standard system for employing people for government jobs. This system was otherwise known as the Spoils system. Before 1881, it was natural for presidents to replace federal employees with people that helped out the president during his campaign. The president is allowed to hire individuals into high ranking jobs, but before 1881 it did not matter whether or not said individual was qualified or not. The president simply held the power to do so, which is why this system is named the Spoils system because "to the victor goes the spoils." In the past the president elected people like friends or family members to high ranking positions, since they were the victor. During Washington's presidency he nominated many federalist to government positions and later when Jefferson took the reigns he cleared all the people from their positions and reelected people with views similar to his since he felt that he held not only the power but this helped deter corruption. Eventually in 1881 James A. Garfield created the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act which basically eliminated the previous Spoils system and replaced it with a merit system. This meant that people that actually both qualify and earned the position received it. This however did not completely abolish the spoils system it simply made it harder for the positions to be given away, it seemed to be more of a way to deter presidents to give these positions away. Most of the current government positions are all determined based upon the merit system or competition based tests, despite that about 3% of the government jobs are determined by the president outside of the merit system itself.

Sources:
http://www.shmoop.com/federal-bureaucracy/spoils-system.html