Keep pulling the thread on Kevin Havighurst.
The professionalization of the U.S. Post Office and its creation of a national delivery network for parcels and magazines enabled the rise of a mass market for goods from companies like Sears and Roebuck.
Between the 1930s and 1950s, a 'functional reorganization' movement restructured U.S. federal agencies, shifting them from being organized by subject matter (e.g., entomology) to being organized by function (e.g., research, regulation, grant programs).
The 'functional reorganization' of U.S. government agencies diminished their ability to recruit top technical talent by eliminating the comprehensive, subject-focused career paths that had previously been a major draw.
The Recoding America Fund raised approximately $100 million to improve government IT and hiring processes.
At the peak of the patronage system in the mid-1800s, the U.S. Post Office had approximately 70,000 patronage-based positions.
In the 1870s, the U.S. Public Health Service was reorganized into a paramilitary-style corps of surgeons, featuring military-like uniforms and ranks, and recruited directly from medical schools.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, bureaus within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, such as the Bureau of Entomology, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Soils, were highly effective at recruiting high-quality personnel.
The Pendleton Act of 1883 initially applied to a very small number of federal positions and its impact on the overall competence of the civil service was not significant for several decades.
Effective historical U.S. government agencies like the Bureau of Entomology attracted top technical talent by organizing around a single subject and combining research, regulation, and grant administration for that subject, offering a uniquely comprehensive career path.
In 1910, two-thirds of the top political appointees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture held graduate degrees in their respective subjects.
Around 1900-1910, European bureaucrats considered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be one of the best-run bureaucracies in the world.
The U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, led in the early 1900s by an engineer trained at France's École des Ponts et Chaussées, established the technical standards and plans that later evolved into the Interstate Highway System.