Rogers Act - Reform

Reform

Wilbur J. Carr, joining the Department as a shorthand clerk in the late 19th century, sought to end the political turmoil that affected both the Diplomatic and Consular Services. Working with his colleague Francois Jones, they composed a congressional bill to change the services into one based on a merit system.

Between 1895 and 1905, the bill was continually defeated. Then Secretary of State Elihu Root in 1905, a reformer himself, discovered Mr. Carr as head of the Consular bureau. Taking the original ideas, Root worked with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and succeeded in passing a merit based bill for the Consular Service in 1906.

Carr began his initial overseas tour in London in 1916. He noted tensions between the diplomatic and consular corps in London and was "shocked to see the staff still wearing top hats and long-tailed coats to work each day". He was further surprised when he heard some of the American diplomatic staff speaking with British accents. He discovered that some of these officers had been living in London for so long they had become almost identical to the British foreign service members with whom they often met and socialized. Carr would later comment that "I have seen some of these young secretaries, who have had exceptional social opportunities and advantages in the capitals abroad, become the most abject followers of the social regime in the foreign capital. One of the things that I hope is going to follow from this bill is to send some of these de-Americanized secretaries to Singapore as vice consul, or to force them out of the service."

With trade becoming an important foreign relations issue in the 1920s, US Representative John Jacob Rogers of Massachusetts sought to complete reforms started by Carr, now Assistant Secretary of State. The bill passed May 24 as the Foreign Service Act of 1924 although it is also called the Rogers Act in honor of the principal author.