ture, and many of them make special provisions for the introduction of the merit system of appointments. Since the introduction of the merit system into the federal service in 1883, six States and nearly 100 cities have adopted it. New York passed a civil-service law in 1883, Massachusetts in 1884, Wisconsin in 1905, Illinois in 1905, Colorado in 1907, New Jersey in 1907, and Ohio, a law providing limited service for cities, in 1908. The cities of over 50,000 population which have a merit system, covering the municipal service in whole or in part, are the following: In only two cities, Galveston and New Orleans, has the scope of the civil-service regulations become narrowed or the law been repealed. Efforts to secure state laws in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut and extensions of existing laws in Illinois have been unsuccessful. In Baltimore and St. Louis new charters containing civil-service provisions are under consideration. In Wheeling, W. Va., civil-service rules are applied to the fire and water departments under its new charter. Muncie, Ind., at the demand of the Indiana fire insurance underwriters, has, by ordinance, adopted civil-service rules for the fire department. Civil-service rules have been extended by the New York Commission, with the approval of Governor Hughes, to Niagara, Oneida, Orange, Ulster, Suffolk, Rensselaer, Nassau, and Chautauqua counties, bringing seventeen counties in New York State under the civilservice rules. Colorado Springs and Grand Junction, Colo.; Leavenworth and Wichita, Kans.; Berkeley, Cal.; Tacoma, Wash.; and Keokuk, Iowa, have all adopted commission forms of government with more or less valuable merit provisions. In Cuba the provisional governor, Charles E. Magoon, as one of his last measures, decreed a strict and comprehensive civil-service law, on January 11 last, for the republic. This was one of the four special laws called for by the peace commission in 1906. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MERIT SYSTEM IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE. An executive order was issued by the President on November 26, 1909, providing for examinations for entrance into the Diplomatic Service, for carefully kept efficiency records of every officer of the service, and for retention and promotion based solely on merit. The order provides, in part, as follows: The Secretary of State is hereby directed to report from time to time to the President, along with his recommendations, the names of those secretaries of the higher grades in the diplomatic service who by reason of efficient service have demonstrated special capacity for promotion to be chiefs of mission. There shall be kept a careful efficiency record of every officer of the diplomatic service, in order that there may be no promotion except upon well-established efficiency as shown in the service, and that retention in the service may be conditioned upon the officers' maintaining a degree of efficiency well up to the average high standard which the interests of the service demand. Initial appointments from outside the service to secretaryships in the diplomatic service shall be only to the classes of third secretary of embassy, or, in case of higher existent vacancies, of second secretary of legation, or of secretary of legation at such post as has assigned to it but one secretary. Vacancies in secretaryships of higher classes shall be filled by promotion from the lower grades of the service, based upon efficiency and ability as shown in the service. To make it more practicable to extend to the appointment, promotion, transfer, or retention of secretaries in the diplomatic service the civil service principle of promotion on the basis of efficiency as shown in the service, and in order that the action of the department may be understood by the officers concerned, all secretaryships in the diplomatic service shall be graded according to the importance, volume, difficulty, or other aspects of the work done by each mission in proportion to the number of men allotted to it, and this classification shall be made known to the members of the service. A person separated from a secretaryship in the diplomatic service without delinquency or misconduct, at his own request in writing may, within a period of one year from the date of such separation, be reinstated in the grade from which he was separated, provided he shall have been originally appointed after the prescribed examination for that grade. In the event, however, that such separation shall be for the purpose of undertaking other work under the Department of State, the limitation of one year for eligibility for reinstatement shall not hold. This rule shall be applicable as regards reinstatements to the consular service and also to the Department of State when transfer shall have been to another branch of the foreign service. The Assistant Secretary of State, the Solicitor for the Department of State, the Chief of the Diplomatic Bureau, and the Chief of the Bureau of Appointments, and the Chief Examiner of the Civil Service Commission or some person whom the Commission shall designate, or such persons as may be designated to serve in their stead, are hereby constituted a board, whose duty it shall be to determine the qualifications of persons designated by the President for examination to determine their fitness for possible appointment as secretaries of embassy or legation. Provision is further made by the order as to qualifications required of persons to be examined and as to the character of the examination. It is also provided that neither in the designation for examination or certification, or appointment after examination, will the political affiliations of the candidates be considered. The action taken in thus extending the merit system to the Diplomatic Service, which is understood to have been done upon the recommendation of the Secretary of State, is particularly gratifying to the Civil Service Commission and should be to all friends of the merit system. NEEDS OF THE COMMISSION. The Commission in several of its annual reports has invited attention to the inadequacy of its office building to properly house its employees and files. It was stated in the last report that the building was unsuitable, as its arrangement is not such as will permit a proper grouping of employees according to their duties, and that there were no rooms for holding examinations. An appropriation of $2,000 has since been made for the rental of examination rooms, but no provision has been made to relieve the congestion in the office building. On December 10, 1908, President Roosevelt sent a special message to Congress, in which he called attention to the need of the Commission for a new building, and the desirableness of erecting such a building instead of renting one, and asked that the matter be given careful consideration. With this message the President transmitted a communication from the Commission submitting draft of a bill for the purchase of a site and the erection of a building as follows: The PRESIDENT: UNITED STATES CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, Washington, D. C., December 7, 1908. The Commission has the honor to call your attention to its needs for a new building and the desirableness of erecting such a building instead of renting one. This Commission has been in operation for twenty-five years now nearly twentysix. Its force has increased to 194 employees, of whom 157 are constantly employed in its offices at Washington. These employees supervise and complete the work of 1,559 local boards, composed of 4;690 members, distributed throughout the territorial extent of the United States, Hawaii, the Isthmus of Panama, and the island of Porto Rico, and in addition thereto the Commission is called upon to supply material and to conduct various transactions relating to eligibility, transfers, and general harmonizing of the Philippine civil service with the civil service of the United States. There are now about 225,000 positions in the competitive class. In the year ended June 30 last there were 167,391 applicants for examination. The space allotted to the Commission in the building occupied by it is divided into basement space, over which the Commission has control only by consent, storage space, hall space, and room space. In the room space possible for the Commission in this building there is, for its Washington employees before mentioned, only 109,625 cubic feet. This building was erected by private parties for such uses as they might deem advisable, and has been rented by the Government for a long time. Its divisions of space are permanent, and they are such that it is not possible for the Commission to assemble its various divisions in contiguous rooms nor to assemble its files on a single floor, so that the work is very greatly increased, unnecessarily but unavoidably. The Commission has been obliged to beg and borrow whenever it could rooms for conducting its examinations. Some of them have been borrowed for a time in the building of 29783-10-3 the Bureau of Pensions. From these rooms so begged and borrowed it is subject at any time to eviction for the convenience of the proper owners or occupants, and such an occurrence has very recently transpired. The Commission has been obliged to go to Alexandria in order to secure a suitable room for its examination purposes. All of these things are not only inconvenient, and in a certain sense humiliating, but they also detract very greatly from the efficiency and add unnecessarily to the work of the Commission. The Commission believes that it is established permanently in the affairs of the Government; that the people generally appreciate its labors and approve of its work, and it earnestly desires that it may have quarters that are permanent and that will be a creditable monument to the work done by the Commission and honor to the public service that it is performing. After twenty-five years of rather arduous existence it may well afford to ask to be put in permanent occupancy of its own quarters. It is a little ludicrous to review what it has been subjected to, but the following facts are respectfully submitted without comment: The early meetings of the Commission in 1883 were held in the apartment of Mr. Dorman B. Eaton at Wormley's Hotel. Later the Commission rented two rooms in a residence at 612 Fourteenth street. From there it moved to the seed building of the Department of Agriculture. In 1885 it moved to a wing of the City Hall building. In 1893 it moved to the Concordia Building, corner of Eighth and E streets, and in 1900 it moved to its present wholly inadequate building. The work of the Commission suffers seriously from being conducted in quarters not adapted to its needs and which at best are but a mere makeshift. A few items of relative cost of recent buildings are added: Cost of Carnegie Library building, $375,000, exclusive of ground; floor space 50,000, square feet. Cost of site of Municipal Building, $500,000; cost of Municipal Building, $2,500,000; floor space, 259,967 square feet. Cost of buildings, Bureau of Standards, $250,000; floor space, including 15,000 square feet for storage and files, 65,000 square feet. This Commission has at all times been conducted with controlling reference to economic considerations and has unselfishly done its work under very straitened circumstances. The only other bureau in Washington whose needs are comparable with those of the Commission is the Interstate Commerce Commission, which has an appropriation of $16,800 for rent of building, while this Commission has an appropriation of but $4,500 for rent of building. This Commission has to house 157 employees, and in addition needs halls to examine hundreds of applicants at the various sittings. Even on the basis of rental per employee, leaving out the examining hall, the rental is only a fraction of what other offices pay. The rental per employee of the largest offices is as follows: Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.. Life-Saving Service... Isthmian Canal Commission. Reclamation Service.. Department of Justice... Interstate Commerce Commission... Bureau of Labor.... Civil Service Commission.. $166 131 109 100 95 92 90 32 As above pointed out, the air space available for the work of the Commission in its present building is but 109,625 cubic feet. The Commission earnestly recommends the submission to the Congress of a bill like the one hereto attached, providing for the purchase of a site and the erection of a building for the Civil Service Commission. If it shall seem wise to the Congress to use government land now in ownership for the erection of a building, so much will be saved in the transaction. The moral element in this proposition, Mr. President, is worthy of consideration. A man is hardly a respected head of a family until he owns a roof under which he may gather that family. Any bureau or department of the Government wholly peripatetic and without permanent quarterings is subject to suspicion and to slighting considerations. We want to be helped out of that situation. We have the honor to be, very respectfully, JOHN C. BLACK, HENRY F. GREENE, EXHIBIT A. Actual cubic feet... Space occupied by desks, files, chairs, books, etc. (approximate). Cubic feet air space remaining.... Average number of cubic feet per clerk (125 clerks). Total number of square feet.... Average number of square feet per clerk (125 clerks)....... Number of cubic feet required for best sanitary purposes. Commissioners. 109, 625 7,220 102, 405 819 8, 852 71 a 1,000 A BILL For the purchase of a site and erection of a building for the Civil Service Commission. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to purchase, at private sale or by condemnation, such lot or lots of land in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, as he may consider necessary as a convenient and proper site, and cause to be erected thereon a suitable building of fireproof construction, for the use and accommodation of the Civil Service Commission; the site and the building thereon, when completed according to plans and specifications to be previously made and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, shall not exceed the cost of three hundred thousand dollars; and for the purposes herein mentioned the sum of three hundred thousand dollars is hereby appropriated, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury. The needs which then existed have become more urgent with the increase of the force and of the files. The Commission is still at work in premises partly hired and partly begged and borrowed for its use. It has now been organized for over twenty-seven years and it is believed that its existence and continuance and the growth of its work are assured. It is believed that it has met with the approval of thoughtful men and that direct sanction has been given it by all the great political organizations. At this time the Commission exercises its lawful control over a much greater number of persons than are under the control of any of the great departments, including civil and military employees. It does seem reasonable that it should be properly housed and provided for by the Government which it a Minimum ward space required by a patient in a hospital changed three times per hour. |