When You Know a Guy Who Knows a Guy . . .

The Supreme Court says that patronage is wrong. In a recent ruling, the justices said that virtually all public employees must be free of the spoils system.

I’m sure the justices know what they are doing. I’m sure they know all about fairness.

I’m just not sure they know about patronage. I’m not sure they have ever tried to pick up garbage on the end of a stick.

I have. 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 from a beach and place it in a canvas bag I wore slung around my neck.

It was a patronage job. I got it through sheer clout. 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.

The community activist wrote me a letter and I took the letter downtown to Korshak’s rather grand office. He saw me immediately. People who are really secure in their power never keep other people waiting.

“So you wanna pick up garbage?” he said.

“Yessir,” I said.

“You in college?” he asked.

“Yessir,” I said.

“OK, then,” he said. “You’re qualified.”

He was a humorous guy in his own way.

He wrote me a letter on his official stationery, put it in an envelope and told me to go to park district headquarters.

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 had a letter. You don’t have to wait if you have a letter.”

And so that day I learned about power and politics and patronage:

Only mugs waited in line. Only mugs thought things were on the level. Guys who knew things knew differently. Guys who knew things knew you didn’t bother going someplace and waiting in line. They knew you needed a letter.

I spent the summer picking up garbage. It would be a terrible cliche 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 reversal, there was great status walking around in work gloves and wearing a garbage sack past friends who were lolling around in bathing suits.

You were earning money. And you were obviously a guy who knew things.

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 patronage the Supreme Court says cannot now exist, favors were not asked in return. I was just small fry. I wasn’t making enough to be able to buy a ticket to a political dinner. So 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 and developed a social conscience. This is one of the drawbacks of higher education. Eventually I graduated and eventually I became a newspaper columnist and eventually I wrote columns railing about the evils and unfairness of patronage.

And one day, I went to 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?”

The summer after my job on the beach, I had determined that I would go straight. No more patronage for me. So I took a civil service test and got a job delivering the U.S. mail.

I would like to report that the civil service system worked better than the patronage system. But I think you all know how well the mail system operates, then and now.

The quality of the work in the post office, where people got their jobs through tests, was no better than on the beach, where they got them through clout.

Nonetheless, patronage is wrong. The Supreme Court says so.

And I am trying to imagine, how, under the new guidelines, we will have to select kids for summer beach jobs.

There will have to be a committee of experts to design a test, of course. And this test will have to be free of all cultural, racial and religious bias.

Then 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.

So I am guessing we will need about 50 government bureaucrats to do what one clerk did by reading my letter.

I guess that’s what the Supreme Court had in mind. And I’m sure it is all worth it.

I just hope the garbage gets picked up.