The selection of examiners from those in the public service was required by Congress in the interest of economy, as well as to secure examiners who should be familiar with the real needs of the offices for which applicants were to be examined. They are paid no extra compensation. Three examiners, selected at each post-office coming under the rules, serve as a Board for the examination of applicants for that office; and from three to five selected in each customs district to which the rules extend serve as a Board for that district.

For the seven Executive Departments at Washington a common Board of ten is selected, two members of this Board coming from each of the three Departments having the largest number of subordinates, and one from each of the four others. This Board supervises the examinations at Washington for the Departmental service, and marks and grades all persons examined there or elsewhere for that service.

Besides the Boards above named, special ones are selected to examine applicants for places for which special knowledge or skill is required, as draughtsmen, telegraphers, patent examiners, &c.

The Commission used the greatest care in the selection of the examiners, in order to secure gentlemen of candor, good judgment, and conscientiousness, united with a high order of intelligence and practical experience. We wish to bear testimony to the efficient and satisfactory manner in which, without exception, the duties of these Boards have been performed.

The result has shown what those best acquainted with the public service anticipated. It has been made clear that many members of that service, ready to make sacrifices and efforts for its improvement, are glad to welcome such tests for admission as will substitute demonstrated merit for partisan influence and secret favor. We have found ample numbers in the offices fully competent for the administration of a system which they believe will improve alike the reputation and efficiency of that service of which they are a part, and to the honor of which they are justly sensitive. Even if an appropriation could have been secured to pay outside examiners, they would have known far less of the needs of the service, and their employment would have been justly regarded, in the Departments and offices, as an offensive and unwarranted condemnation of the capacity and fidelity of those serving there.

In States and Territories in which no postal or customs examiners are yet required, the examinations of applicants for the Departmental service, unless they prefer to go into some adjoining State, or to attend at Washington, are held under the charge of a Board selected by the Commission from among persons in the Federal service in such States and Territories. Boards of this latter class have already held examinations in North and South Carolina. The need of supplying promptly the wants of the classified postal and customs service caused examinations to be first held in the States to which such classified service extends, but local examinations for the service at Washington are now being extended to other States.

THE APPLICATION FOR EXAMINATION.

To every person requesting to enter the classified service a blank application paper is sent. The filling of this paper is the first step in the applicant's examination. In the proper blanks he gives his name, age, residence, and occupation for each of the past five years, and such other facts in regard to himself and his experience, education, and qualifications as are important to be known. All these statements are made under oath, and are required to be confirmed by the vouchers of not less than three nor more than five persons, who state, in blank certificates on the same sheet, their knowledge of the applicant and their belief of the truth of his statements, and vouch for his character, capacity, and good reputation. No recommendations outside of these vouchers are allowed to be received or considered by the Commission, the examiners, or the appointing officers. (See section 10 of act.)

The application thus filled is returned to the Commission or to the proper Examining Board, and if its statements show that the applicant is regularly vouched for, and that he is entitled by age, health, and citizenship to be examined for the service he seeks, his name is entered upon the proper record, with the date of his application, and his paper is placed on file. When the next examination is held, at a point which seems convenient for him, he is notified to be present.

If the applications on file at any office are in excess of the number that can be examined at one time, the earlier applicants, by Rule 13, are summoned first; except that at Washington the duty of apportionment may require those to be first examined who are from States whose qualified applicants are in deficient numbers. This excludes all preference of applicants through favor or patronage, and is in the spirit of the act, section 5, which makes all willful and corrupt obstruction of the right of examination a criminal offense. The applicants who are in excess of the number that can be examined at one time stand first upon the record to be notified for the next examination. Examinations are held as frequently as the needs of the service require. Thus far all applicants (except some from the District of Columbia, where the number is excessive, and in one or two similar cases outside) have been notified to attend the first examinations held after their applications were received.

The application paper is itself a sort of preliminary examination. It asks the same questions that any wise and experienced business man or appointing officer would desire to ask concerning the circumstances, health, character, and experience of the applicant, and it frequently deters from the examinations unworthy or incompetent persons, who find themselves unable to answer satisfactorily the inquiries proposed, or unwilling to give the information asked for. Of the hungry host of place-seekers, many are weeded out by the necessity of making this sworn statement of their career, while to genuine and worthy applicants it opens the way for the proper statement of their qualifications.

WHO MAY COMPETE.

A competition theoretically perfect would be one in which every person, from any part of the country, could compete for every vacancy. But the needs of the public business, as well as the provisions of the act that the examination shall be practical, and shall fairly test the capacity and fitness needed for discharging the duties of the place sought, require limitations. The qualifications needed for carriers or for weighers, for example, are quite different from those needed for copyists, or for some grades of clerks. Questions appropriate for ordinary clerkships would be unfit tests for telegraphers, or Pension-Office examiners. Provision is therefore made under which the application paper designates the grade or description of places sought; and it follows that the real competition is between all those who seek the same grade or places.

Further than this, the act, by requiring the appointments to the service at Washington to be apportioned among the States, Territories, and the District of Columbia, practically makes the competition between those from the same State or Territory, rather than an inter-State competition. In some cases, perhaps, this State competition may put into the service a person inferior to the one whom the broader competition would have supplied. But it gives to each State and Territory, what it has not yet had, a proportion of the appointments numerically due to its population, and it will unquestionably stimulate education in the States as well as increase the local interest in all matters affecting the administration of the Federal Government.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS.

Every provision of law favorable to those who have rendered honorable service in the Army or Navy of the United States is preserved in the civil service act and the rules; and in the latter (see Rule XI) these patriotic privileges have been in the matter of age and otherwise somewhat extended. Every person honorably discharged from such service by reason of disability incurred in the line of duty, if he shall exhibit the measure of capacity found to be essential in the civil service, is allowed a preference.

SUBJECTS FOR EXAMINATION.

The branches embraced in the general examinations for ordinary clerkships and other places of the same grade, are given in Rule 7. In none of these branches do the questions go further than is covered by the ordinary instruction in the common schools of the country. A limited examination is provided under Clause 4 of Rule 7, for copyists, messengers, carriers, night inspectors, and other employés of similar grades, including only a part of the branches above named, the subjects and questions being varied in number and grade to meet the require

ments of the different parts of the service. This allows persons of only limited attainments to secure the positions for which they are competent. The common-school education must have been exceedingly defective which does not enable one to pass this examination.

It will be noticed that, even in the general or higher grade of examination, under Clause I of Rule 1, proficiency in the first three subjects secures eligibility for appointment. Therefore failure in the last two will exclude no one from the service, though a good standing therein raises the grade of the applicant and gives him the better chances for an appointment.

If any shall notice with regret that only common-school education is exacted for entering the public service at the higher grade, and that thus only small direct reward is offered to academic and college learning, it may be remembered, on the other hand, that both by rewarding excellence in the common schools and by barring out corrupt influence from public office, learning of every grade, and good character and manly effort in every position are stimulated and strengthened. The common schools are the gates to the academies and the academies are the gates to the colleges.

It should always be a paramount object to keep the public service freely open to as many of the people as have the ability and information needed for doing its work. The best informed and most meritorious of those who enter it will be likely to win the higher prizes through promotion when once the merit system for admission shall be fairly established. And though the higher education is not necessary in order to gain admission to the public service, it will nevertheless prove its value in the mastery of the principles and methods of that service, and so gain higher consideration, and give increased power to those who possess it.

SPECIAL AND TECHNICAL EXAMINATIONS.

While only the common-school education is required of the applicant for the ordinary clerkships and subordinate places in the classified service, there are other places, comparatively few in number, for which higher qualifications are requisite. Among these are clerkships in the State Department, which demand some knowledge of modern languages and of other special subjects; assistant examiners, draughtsmen, and other places requiring technical knowledge or skill, in the Patent Office; pension examiners and other clerkships in several Departments requiring some knowledge of law; draughtsmen and other employés in the Supervising Architect's Office and Engineer Department and employés in other technical or scientific Bureaus or divisions of the service. Rule 7, Clause 5, provides for the special examinations for such places. Special Boards of Examiners have already been designated in the State Department, the Patent Office, and the Pension Bureau. Special examinations have been held of a telegrapher for the Department of Justice, and a

topographic draughtsman for the Engineer Department. These two examinations were non-competitive, the need of filling the vacancies being urgent, and only one applicant offering in each case. They are the only non-competitive-examinations which have thus far been held under the rules.

QUESTIONS AND EXAMINATIONS.

In order to secure uniformity and justice, the questions for the examinations are almost invariably prepared by the Commission, those for any Examining Board outside of Washington being forwarded for its use just before an examination is to be held. They are printed upon sheets with adequate space below each question for writing the answer or solution. The applicant gets his first knowledge of the questions as the sheets are given him, one after the other as his work advances, at his examination table. The examinations are open to such spectators as can be accommodated without interfering with the quiet due to those being examined, but the answers are not exhibited without the consent of the person who wrote them. The question sheets, with the answers thereon, are preserved as a part of the permanent records of the Commission, so that the fairness of the marking and grading can be tested as well a year as a week after they are made. In Appendix No. 5 are given examples (except that for brevity the answer spaces are omitted) of the several grades of questions, being the same actually used on several of the general and limited examinations, and they are a fair specimen of the average character of the whole. It is hardly necessary to add that, except in the very few examinations needed for places requiring technical or scientific knowledge, no questions more difficult have been used. The examples in arithmetic do not go beyond the needs of the public business. Every question in geography, history, or government is confined to that of the United States. Not a word of a foreign language, nor a technical term of art or science, nor any example in algebra, geometry, or trigonometry has been employed in any one of the general or limited examinations, and these examinations alone are used for at least ninety-five out of every hundred places within the classified service.

MARKING AND GRADING.

The rules and regulations contain sufficient explanation of the methods pursued in marking and grading. That work is done by the Boards of Examiners, and while doing it they do not know whose papers they are marking. (See Regulation 21.) This saves the examiners from bias and from suspicion of partiality.

*

*At the smaller offices those examined may, by handwriting or otherwise, be known to the examiners, but in such offices the temptations to injustice are less, and no complaint of that nature has been made to the Commission.