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/spɔɪlz sˈɪstəm/ Listen

Spoils system

noun

The system of employing and promoting civil servants who are friends and supporters of the group in power.

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Etymology of 'Spoils system'

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"Spoils system" Quotes from Famous Books

... dismissing them. The new President very rightly refused to recognize nominations so made, and this has been seized upon by his detractors to hold him up as the real author of what was afterwards called "the Spoils System." It would be far more just to ...

— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... the political ethics of the sixties that discountenanced the use of the spoils of office, and Lincoln himself, though he resented the drain of office-seeking upon his time, appears not to have seen that the spoils system was at variance with the fundamentals ...

— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... also a dangerous source of conflict. It was necessary to find an opening subject which would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there is no hesitation in the vigor of the attack. Logically it was an ideal ...

— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... hate the Messengers of Light. Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the Julian-republican clique for the opposite. He stood for the nations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high purposes of the Law. They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the old spoils system.—Down him then! said they. And how?—Fish up mad Postumus, and let's have a row with the Legions of the Rhine.—Yes; that sounds pretty—for you who are not in the deep know of the thing. But how far do you think the ...

— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

Words linked to "Spoils system" : system of rules, system, merit system