ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JULY 25, 2005
WASHINGTON - - I know I should be more outraged by the scandal in Chicago.
According to the U.S. Attorney there, the City of Chicago has hired people based on their political connections and not strictly on merit.
When I was growing up in Chicago, this was called "everyday life."
But today U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald feels that this is a "vast fraud."
Fitzgerald has discovered that "loyalty to certain political groups, alderman and labor unions tended to be decisive" in hiring.
Wow.
If Fitzgerald's name seems familiar, that is because in his spare time he is the special prosecutor who has put a reporter in jail in the Valerie Plame case.
Fitzgerald is so ferocious, especially when it comes to the press, I figure I better fess up before he kicks my door down: I was a teenage patronage worker in Chicago. I got the job strictly on political connections and not on merit.
For one summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I used a three-foot stick with a nail on the end to pick up garbage at Rainbow Beach in Chicago and place the garbage in a canvas bag I wore slung around my neck.
How did I get such a terrific job? I knew a guy who knew a guy.
I knew a community activist who knew the city treasurer of Chicago. The treasurer, Marshall Korshak, dispensed jobs like some people dispense breath mints.
I went down to Korshak's rather grand office at City Hall and he wrote me a letter on his official stationery, put it in an envelope and told me to go down to park district headquarters to get my job.
When I got there, more than a hundred kids were in a line that snaked down the hall. They were all there for jobs. I got in the end of the line and waited.
After about 20 minutes, a passing clerk saw in my hand Korshak's letter with the city seal on the envelope.
He took me by the sleeve and led me to the head of the line and then into an office. "Why dincha say something?" he said, sitting down and writing out my job assignment. "You have a letter. You don't have to wait if you have a letter."
And that day I learned about power and politics and patronage.
So I spent the summer picking up garbage. It would be a terrible cliché to say it was one of the best summers of my life, but it was one of the best summers of my life.
It was outdoor work and, by some strange social reversal, I gained great status by walking around in work gloves and wearing a garbage sack past my friends who were lolling around in bathing suits.
I was earning money. And I was obviously a guy who knew a guy.
People imagine there is always something heavy-handed and forbidding about patronage. That some guy knocks on your door 10 years later and asks you to do a favor for the Godfather.
And, at some levels, that exists. To get a favor, you have to do a favor.
But at my level, at the level of everyday patronage, I was not asked to do anything in return.
And what's the worst anyone could have asked of me? To vote Democratic? Hell, I was living on the south side of Chicago. I wasn't sure voting Republican was even legal.
At the end of the summer, I went back to college with the money I had earned and developed a social conscience. This is one of the drawbacks of higher education.
I eventually I graduated and became a newspaper columnist in Chicago and I wrote columns railing about the evils and unfairness of patronage.
One day, I decided to go see Marshall Korshak, who by that time was retired, to talk to him about all those jobs he had handed out.
He was proud of his accomplishments. "Over the years, I placed thousands of people," he said. "Thousands."
He did not remember, of course, that I was one of the people he had placed. So I told him about it. And, ungrateful cur that I was, I unloaded my guilty conscience on him.
I told him that what he had done for me was not fair, not right. Everyone should have an equal chance for every job, I said, regardless of whom they know.
Korshak gave me a weary smile. "Tell me something," he said. "You did the job? You picked up the garbage?"
"Sure," I said. "I did the job. I did a good job."
"So what wasn't fair?" he said. "As long as the job got done, what wasn't fair?"
That answer is no longer acceptable. Today, you answer something like that and you end up in a federal prison.
I imagine that in the future, there will have to be a committee of experts in Chicago to design a test for garbage picking . This test will have to be free of all cultural, racial and religious bias. And there will have to be people to conduct the tests and grade the tests and review the appeals of the people who flunk the test.
I am guessing the city will need about 50 bureaucrats to do what one guy did by writing a letter.
This is progress. This is inevitable. And I am glad that in the future people will be selected based solely on their skills.
But I'll bet none of them picks up garbage any better than I did.