1. APPOINTMENT.

II. DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE.

Dropping from one register when appointed from another.—(1) Any applicant who is on both a clerk or copyist [now clerk-copyist] and a supplementary register may be certified from either, and when appointed from one shall be dropped from or cease to be eligible upon the other.

(2) Any applicant who takes the basis examination [now clerk-copyist] for the sole purpose of enabling him to take a supplementary examination, shall be certified from the supplementary register only.

(3) Any applicant who is on both a clerk or copyist [now clerk-copyist] and a supplementary register, and who declines an appointment upon certification from the clerk or copyist register on the ground that he desires to be appointed only to a place the qualifications for which are tested by the supplementary examination, shall not, by such declination, forfeit his right to certification from the supplementary register.

(4) Any applicant who is on both a clerk or copyist [now clerk-copyist] and a special register may be certified from either, and if appointed from the clerkcopyist register shall remain eligible on the special register; but if appointed from a special register shall be dropped from all other registers. (Minutes, January 18, 1887, clause 1, vol. 4, p. 54.)

2. APPORTIONMENT.

(a) Persons transferred from excepted to nonexcepted places shall be charged to the apportionment, (Minutes, June 4, 1888, clause 1, vol 8, p. 17.) Also transfers from postal, customs, or railway mail service to enter departmental service. (Minutes, April 25, 1888, clause 2, vol. 7, p. 304; and post p. 130, opinion 18.)

(b) Examinations can not be allowed under General Rule III, paragraph 2, section (d), or for transfer to the departmental service to nominees residents of a State that has received its full share of appointments unless the officer making the requisition for the transfer or the nomination for appointment shall state that the conditions of good administration in his Department demand the appointment of the particular person named because of certain special qualifications possessed by him to meet the special requirements of the place, and that such requirements can not be met by the ordinary methods of promotion and appointment. (Letter book U, p. 91, March 7, 1892, and Minutes, September 19, 1888, clause 6.)

(c) Temporary appointment.-There is a distinction between appointments for a temporary fixed period and appointments made on probation for six months which under the rules are to be followed by absolute appointment, in this that the former are not to be charged to the apportionment and the names to be retained on the register for certification to any vacancy for which eligible, while in the latter the appointments are to be charged to the apportionment and the names dropped from the register. (Book M, p. 111. Letter to Secretary of Agriculture.)

(d) Method of determining condition which will exclude a State from certification.— The average percentage of appointments of the States, Territories, and the District of Columbia of the 2,000 appointments now being apportioned is 57.2. It is ordered that no certification of an eligible from a State having a share greater than the average, as ascertained from time to time by the method herein described, shall be made unless there is a total failure of other eligibles, or there are preference claimants to be certified, or the conditions of good administration require the certification to be made therefrom. No certification shall be made under the last-named condition except by order of the Commission. Every twenty appointments will raise this average 1 per cent.

It is ordered, that when sixteen additional appointments shall have been made and the average reaches 58 per cent, the conditions above stated shall apply to the States then in excess, and thereafter in like manner upon each twenty appointments being made. (Minutes, April 12, 1893, clause 1.)

(e) Preference claimants--1754 R. S.-Certification of, to be without regard to the apportionment. (Minutes, September, 17, 1886, clause 17.)

(f) Assistant engineers, Treasury Department.-Quota rule not insisted upon in their appointment. The Commission will therefore examine any person for these places who may be nominated by the Secretary of the Treasury, without regard to their legal residence. (Letter to Secretary of Treasury, November 21, 1892. C. E. Book. 3. CENSUS ACT OF MARCH 1, 1889.-Section 3.

A person transferred to the Census Office from an Executive Department does not lose the right of transfer to any other Department. (Minutes, November 6, 1889, clause 5, vol. 12.)

4. CERTIFICATION FROM SPECIAL AND SUPPLEMENTARY REGISTERS.

To be without regard to salary. It is not the practice to reserve a name for a place of any particular grade, but eligibles are certified strictly in the order of vacancies for which special qualifications are needed without reference to salary. (Minutes, April 5, 1888, clause 2, vol. 7, pp. 232–233.)

5. CLASSIFICATION.

(a) Messenger, laborer, workman, or watchman under classification of June 29, 1888, not to be assigned to clerical duty without examination. This was to prevent an abuse which was common in the public service and to secure the assignment to the legitimate duties of their station of all persons appointed to the subordinate places. The examination required before such assignment to clerical duty is held to be the regular competitive examination for securing a place on the eligible registers of the Commission, and the Commission would certify from those registers to fill a vacancy in any one of the subordinate places upon the request of the head of a Department who desired to appoint a person to such place with a view to his being assigned to clerical duty. [It is not enough that a person has passed an examination and is entered on an eligible register; he must have been certified in his order on the same basis with all others and appointed.] The order was not intended and it is not to be construed to prevent the incidental performance of any duties which do not conflict with the legitimate duties of the position in which an employé is serving. (Circular letter to Departments, dated November 6, 1888.)

(b) Continuous service of a person brought within the classified service, in a place subject to examination, by the revision and extension of the classification, shall be counted as having been rendered in the classified service. (Minutes, July 23, 1888, clause 1, vol. 8, p. 209.)

6. DEPARTMENT TO REPORT APPOINTMENTS, ETC.

Departments are to report to the Commission all appointments to and separations from the classified service, however made, and all changes of status or grade within the classified service. (Minutes, April 10, 1888, clause 4, vol. 7, page 253.) 7. EXAMINATIONS.

The clerk-copyist examination for the departmental service has for its object the testing of the qualifications of applicants for admission to that service; therefore this examination is not open to persons already in the classified departmental service, and no persons who are in such service can be examined for or be held eligible on any except the special registers. To examine persons for positions which they already hold would be unnecessary and contrary to public policy. (Minutes, April 23, 1888, clause 10, vol. 7, p. 296.)

8. PRINTERS' ASSISTANTS.

Examination was not intended to and does not test the educational qualifications needed in the clerk-copyist grade, but was intended to test only that measure of general intelligence requisite for the positions of printers' assistants or other positions of like character. Not proper for transfer to be made to clerical position. (Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, June 8, 1889.)

9. PROBATION.

(a) Entrance to classified service through noncompetitive examination to be upon probational appointment. (Book M, p. 23, December 16, 1889.)

(b) Probation of substitute.—The time during which a person has rendered service as a substitute in one Department should not be counted as part of his period of probation in another Department. The rules contemplate that the service of six months shall be rendered under the observation of one appointing officer and that there shall be a continuous observation in one Department of the capacity and conduct of a probationer for the prescribed period of time. (Book Q, p. 327, January 13, 1891.)

10. REINSTATEMENT.

(a) Where a person has been separated from the Department as a clerk he is not eligible for reinstatement as an assistant draftsman, for the reason that the latter place is one requiring a higher examination than the former, and therefore in contravention of the rule. (Letter book R, p. 309, May 11, 1891.)

(b) May only be made to Department in which the person last served.-In the case of a transfer from one department to another, although such transfer involves a resignation from the service of the department from which the transfer is made, yet the service is continuous, there being no actual separation from the service, and the rule under which reinstatements are made provides for reinstatement to the Department from which the separation from the service took place. In this view of the case the Commission holds that the person is only eligible for reinstatement in the department from which the final separation took place. (Letter of May 12, 1893, Book Z, p. 58.)

11. RESIDENCE.

(a) Ordered, That on and after the 1st day of April next no application shall be accepted for an examination for the departmental service where the appointment would be charged to the apportionment unless it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the Commission that the applicant is at the time and has been for the six months next preceding actually living and residing and having his or her place of abode in the State in which residence is claimed, or that he or she is employed in the public service of said State or of the United States, or where the applicant pays poll tax or is a voter in said State or is the wife or minor child of a person who is then in the public service of the State or of the United States as aforesaid, or is such voter or pays such poll tax. (Minutes, March 7, 1893, clause 2.)

I understand the Attorney-General in his opinion of August 29, 1893, (see opinion at page 133 post), to hold that if the construction given to the words in the Commission's order of March 7, 1893, viz: "actually living and residing and having his or her place of abode" involves narrowing the statutory requirement of "actual bona fide residence," then it is a regulation which the Commission has no authority to make. Attorney-General Miller, in his opinion of April 1, 1891, construing the words “actual bona fide resident,” contained in the act of July 11, 1890, held that these words did not necessarily require actual bodily presence. The order of the Commission does require actual bodily presence, except in the four classes of cases specified therein, and is therefore a narrowing of the statutory requirement of "actual bona fide residence," and to this extent unauthorized. In the absence of my associates I shall not formulate a new regulation, but shall treat the regulation of March 7 as suspended, and decide each doubtful case upon its merits on the basis of the facts présented and the opinions of the Attorneys-General of April 1, 1891, and August 29, 1893, as I understand them. (Commissioner Lyman, Minutes, September 12, 1893, clause 1.)

(b) Change of State.-The Commission decides that where an applicant for the departmental service, subsequent to the filing and acceptance of his application, makes a bona fide change of residence from one State to another he loses his status H. Ex. 1, pt. 8– 88

as an applicant or eligible of the State from which he removes at the time of such removal, and does not acquire a right to be treated as an applicant or eligible of the State to which he removes until he has resided therein six months and has filed with this Commission an affidavit of change and all the certificates required in an original application. (Minutes, January 17, 1893, clause 1.)

12. TRANSFER.

(a) A person who is transferred from a classified customs district to a bureau of the Treasury Department in which business relating to the customs is transacted can not be transferred to a bureau in which business relating to the customs is not transacted. (Letter to Secretary of the Treasury, Letter book M, p. 237, January 13, 1890.)

(b) A person brought within the classified service subject to examination by the revision and extension of the classification may be transferred under Departmental Rule VIII upon the certificate of the Commission that he has passed an examination to test fitness for the place to which he is to be transferred, and has been during at least six months preceding the date of the certificate in the classified service of the Department from which transfer is to be made to any place the salary of which is not more than $900 per annum; and to any place the salary of which is $1,000 per annum or more upon the certificate of the Commission that he has passed an examination to test fitness for the place to which he is to be transferred and has been during at least one year in the classified service of the Department from which the transfer is to be made. (Minutes, July 23, 1888, clause 1, vol. 8, p. 210.)

(c) A person may not be transferred to a Department under the rules for transfer if not eligible under the age limitation for entrance examinations. (Minutes, April 3, 1889, clause 3, vol. 11.)

(d) When conditions of apportionment prevent.—The Commission, as a rule, has for a long time refused to consent to the transfer of residents of the District of Columbia to the departmental service or to their examination with a view to appointment to that service. The exceptions to this rule have been for places requiring some special or technical qualifications not readily found, when applicants from outside the District, after due public notice, have failed to appear; and when citizens of the District have been nominated for places which under the civil-service rules may be filled by noncompetitive examination, and in connection with the nomination the appointing officer has stated, in effect, that the conditions of good administration demanded the appointment of the particular person nominated because of some special requirement of the place or qualification of the man for the place, which could not otherwise be reasonably met.

Subsection 3 of section 2 of the civil-service law provides as follows:

Third. Appointments to the public service aforesaid in the Departments at Washington shall be apportioned among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia upon the basis of population as ascertained at the last preceding

census.

And section 2 of Departmental Rule VII provides as follows:

Certifications hereunder shall be made in such manner as to maintain, as nearly as possible, the apportionment of appointments among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia, as required by law.

The present Attorney-General, in commenting upon this provision of the law, has

said:

"The apportionment by the act of the appointments to the public service in the Departments at Washington among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia is somewhat fundamental in its character, and was no doubt intended to be faithfully observed by those charged with the duty of enforcing the law, under which the people of the several States and Territories and of the District of Columbia have certain rights which it is the duty of the Civil Service Commission to protect.

"But, while it is the undoubted duty of the executive branch of the Government to give proper effect to this requirement of Congress, it is a very different thing to say that an appointment made in disregard of this rule of apportionment through a mere inadvertence is to fail entirely and be treated as a nullity."

The case before him in which these remarks were made was the case of a man who had filed an application showing legal residence in a certain State, and who was examined, entered upon the eligible register, certified, and appointed as of that State. After examination, but before certification, he removed to another State without notifying the Commission of his change of residence. The State to which he removed had received a number of appointments in excess of its share under the apportionment, and had the Commission been notified of this change of residence, as it should have been, this man would not have been appointed and some person an actual resident of the State from which he had removed would have been. The result was that this man received an appointment to which he was not entitled and a State was charged with an appointment which it did not get, while another State received an appointment which it ought not to have had.

The question was, was this appointment made under these circumstances void? The Attorney-General held that it was not, and said that in his opinion "the statute is directory only in this particular."

In view of this decision and of the action heretofore taken in a few exceptional cases this Commission will not refuse to certify for transfer to the departmental service or for appointment therein upon noncompetitive examination a citizen of the District of Columbia or of a State having received an excessive number of appointments, provided the officer making the requisition for the transfer or the nomination for appointment shall state that the conditions of good administration in his Department demand the appointment of the particular person named because of certain spécial qualifications possessed by him to meet the special requirements of the place, and that such requirement can not be met by the ordinary methods of promotion and appointment. (Letter book U, p. 91, March 7, 1892.)

(e) From excepted to unexcepted places.—A person is not eligible for transfer unless in the bureau in which he is serving. Not only must the provision of departmental Rule VIII as to transfers be complied with, but also the provision of departmental Rule II, clause 4, which limits transfers from excepted places to the bureau in which service is rendered. (Letter book R, p. 19, February 27, 1891.)

13. WEATHER BUREAU, OBSERVERS.

Ordered, In view of the technical character of the examination and of the special conditions of the service, that hereafter applications for examination for observers in the Weather Bureau of the Department be accepted, although the applicant may be a resident of the District of Columbia or of a State or Territory which has an excess of appointments under the apportionment, and that certification of eligibles be also made without reference to State residence, the requirements of the apportionment being waived in view of the character of the examination and of the conditions of the service; appointments from this register, however, to be charged to the proper State apportionment, as in other cases. (Minutes, October 3, 1893, clause 17.).

III. CUSTOMS SERVICE.

1. APPOINTMENT.-Customs Rule IV, clause 1.

"Lowest class or grade" means lowest class in a grade for which an entrance examination is provided. (Minutes, May 21, 1888, clause 2, vol. 7, p. 397.)

2. CLASSIFICATION.-(See Classification of the Customs Service.)

(a) Temporary assistant weighers at the port of New York are classified places not excepted from examination. No person can legally be temporarily appointed to any classified place without examination and certification. (Minutes of August 5, 1887, clause 12, vol. 6, p. 15.)