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The grave responsibility and the guarantees of fairness under which the markings and gradings are made are to be found in the penal clause of the fifth section of the act and in Rules 8 and 23.

It has been found practicable to attain a high degree of uniformity and certainty in these markings, and the appeals to the Commission for their revision have been very small in proportion to the numbers examined, hardly two cases in a hundred.

So much uniformity, however, has not been attained without much care. In the first attempts some diversity in applying the standards for marking and grading was perhaps inevitable between the different local Boards. But the same standard was applied to all those examined for the same office, thus avoiding all injustice.

The example in marking and grading, given in the regulations, sufficiently illustrates the method. It will be seen that a failure in one question, or even failures in several of the fifteen to thirty questions, need not prevent the applicant's securing the required grade. High proficiency in one subject may cover deficiencies in others; therefore, ability to get into the service can in no case depend upon an answer to any one or two questions, or even entirely upon the information shown upon any one subject. Yet it should be said that bad penmanship seriously threatens failure in competing for positions as copyists, or for clerkships of the lower grade, where penmanship is especially important.

THE APPORTIONMENT.

The apportionment of new appointments at Washington is to be made to States and Territories according to population, as ascertained at the last preceding census. The number that will fall to any one of them within a year cannot be accurately known, because the whole number of vacancies is not known beforehand. Following the apportionment of representation in Congress, which is also based upon population as ascertained at the last census, the certification to fill vacancies is made as nearly as possible in the same ratio. It may not be at any moment mathematically exact, but in the year will be as nearly complete as the appearance of proper persons from the several States and Territories will allow.

It will be noticed that the appointments already made to the service have been made from twenty-six States and Territories.*

RESIDENCE.

In the application paper the residence of all applicants must be stated under oath. The question whether legal or mere temporary residence is intended arises under this law as well as under so many

* From the District of Columbia there have been two appointments in excess, which resulted from an unanticipated selection of more than one from a single certification to a Department, a thing not likely to happen again.

others, but the Commission assume that legal residence is meant by the act. If mere present residence should be treated as the intention of the act, an applicant might fix such residence in any State to which he may go perhaps for the very purpose.

The custom of officers of the Government retaining for years a legal residence in the States from which they came, leads others not in Government employ to suppose that they too may continue to claim a legal residence in the States in which they or their parents formerly lived, though they may long since have established permanent homes here.

It is natural that at the seat of Government a large excess of applicants for the public service shall be found. Under the old system the District of Columbia supplied numbers of clerks greatly disproportioned to its population. The requirement by Congress that new appointments shall be apportioned to the States and Territories on the basis of population, has diminished the chances of residents of Washington to secure Government places in the same ratio that it has increased the chances of those who reside elsewhere.

CERTIFYING FOR APPOINTMENT.

Those who have attained a grade showing fitness for appointment at Washington are placed upon the proper registers kept by the Commission, for the service there; and at other places by the Examining Board at each place. (See Rules 13, 14, and 16, and Regulations 4 to 10.) These registers are permanent books of record showing the age, grade, residence, date of entry thereon as eligible for appointment for all parts and grades of the service. When a vacancy occurs at Washington, the Commission, and when at a post-office or customs office the Examining Board for the same, certifies from the proper register four persons who are graded highest among those entered thereon for the grade or part of the service in which the vacancy exists. In the latter offices, where no apportionment is required, the four graded highest must in every case be certified. At Washington, the Commission takes the four names from the list of those from one or more States (having names upon the register) which have the strongest claim on the basis of the apportionment. But the highest in grade, from the State or States which have such claim, must be taken; and the whole action in that regard appears of record. The grade is won by the applicant himself. The order of selection is fixed by the law and the rules. This excludes both favor and patronage.

The need of certifying as many as four is twofold:

First. The appointing power, conferred by Congress upon the heads of Departments under the strict terms of the Constitution, is a power of choice-a right of selection for appointment from among several. That opportunity of choice is inseparable from the power itself. On the other hand, it is the duty of the appointing officer to use that right of choice by selecting the most worthy and capable. Congress may by

law facilitate such exercise of that right by a system which brings to the notice of the appointing officers persons proved to be both capable and of good character, together with the evidence of such facts. From these it may require the appointment to be made. To aid the appointing power in that way, and not to weaken it, is the principal object of the examinations. Congress and the Executive co-operated in aid of doing what the appointing officers have found it impossible to do alone. The laws of 1853 and 1855 affirmed the same principal by allowing no one to be appointed who had not been examined.*

Second. Inasmuch as the head of the Department knows best the kind of excellence needed in a particular vacancy, he is allowed a choice among several. A choice between four seems to preserve the authority of the appointing power, and to allow a sufficient variety of capacity for answering the needs of the public business. For both these reasons a requirement that the applicant graded highest be taken would be indefensible.

In a vast majority of cases we have reason to think that those certified were at that date unknown to the appointing officers. It is the evident duty of the appointing officer to select the most fit of the four certified, and in the great majority of cases the highest in grade among the four certified has been appointed.

WOMEN IN THE SERVICE.

Nowhere on the part of the Commission or its subordinates is there any favor or disadvantage allowed by reason of sex. Only under free, open, competitive examinations have the worthiest women the opportunities, and the Government the protection, which arise from allowing character and capacity to win the precedence and the places their due. The need for political influence or for importunate solicitation, especially disagreeable to women, for securing appointments in the classified service exists no longer.

Rule 16, clause 3, controls the certification of women for appointment so completely that the Commission has no discretion on the subject. The law in force before the passage of the civil service act gave the heads of Departments authority to decide when women are required or can be accepted. Both the civil service act and the rules leave that authority unimpaired.

In order to prevent disappointment we ought to add that, perhaps because the examinations naturally appeal to the hopes and the ambition of women, a greater number of them, in proportion to the places treated by the Departments as open to their sex, have been examined, and hence the number of women waiting to be certified is large in a like ratio.

*Several years before the passage of the civil service act, the then Attorney-General held that the right of choice might be limited to three.

REMOVALS.

The power of removal and its exercise for just reasons are essential both to the discipline and the efficiency of the public service. A life tenure would be indefensible.

The civil service act and rules leave the authority and duty of removal undisturbed, with this exception, that the second rule forbids a removal for refusing to perform a political service or to pay a political assessment, and the last rule adds every violation of either rule or of the provisions of the act against assessments to the good causes for removal which existed before. The act and rules have greatly diminished the pressure upon appointing officers for removals, and have taken from them the temptation to make removals of their own motion for the mere purpose of making a vacancy for a favorite. Many removals, and those the most indefensible in former years, were unquestionably made not because the person removed was not a useful public servant, but because some powerful influence was to be conciliated, some friend was to be gratified, or some dangerous enemy was to be placated by putting a particular person in the vacancy.

Nevertheless, save in the particulars mentioned; the power to remove for even the most partisan and selfish reasons remains unchanged. The changes are only in the opportunity of filling the vacancy with favorites and henchmen, and in the greater peril from a frowning, hostile public opinion.

Whether this taking away of such causes for removals will keep meritorious officials longer in their places will depend upon the question whether an administration is more anxious to promote the interests of the people, or to bribe elections by patronage and appease the clamors of partisans by making vacancies. It is still possible to promise the spoils of a hundred thousand offices as the rewards of party victory in a national canvass. It is still possible to remove every person in the classified service once in four years or once in four months. But the vacancies can be filled only by those, who irrespective of party, demonstrate superiority in free, open competition of character and capacity.

It is worthy of notice that any loss of patronage and profits which may result from the enforcement of a merit system will fall not very unequally upon both the great parties. The spoils system, upon the theory of its friends, opens three sources of strength. (1) Extortion from Federal officials, under fear of removal by the party in power, of vast sums for its campaign expenses. (2) Servile work for that party by all these officials enforced by the same fear. (3) The promise of places made to outsiders as the reward of work and contributions for carrying elections. Manifestly the first two of these sources of strength, and perhaps the most effective on that theory, are the loss and sacrifice of the party in power alone. It makes that sacrifice on the very threshold of reform.

It is not, however, so generally seen that the third surrender is, on that theory, the common loss of both parties. Yet such is the fact; for a party in power, after secretly assuring all its subordinates who are effective workers that their best efforts for the party will make them safe, can, on the methods of that system, make proclamation just as effectively and corruptly as the other party to the office-seeking class that three or four thousand places will be the prizes of the most effective workers and contributors for the elections.*

PROMOTIONS AND OTHER EXCEPTIONS FROM THE RULES.

Rule 19, recognizing needs in the public service familiar to those acquainted with the conditions of good administration, allows the applicants for certain places to be appointed without examination. The confidential or fiduciary relations sustained by those who fill some of these places, the occasional need of employing persons of professional standing or of peculiar capacity in others, and the lack of temptation for disregarding the public interests in filling others, are the reasons for all but one of these exceptions.

The entire exceptions (aside from that relating to promotions) cover but few places-not exceeding 135 in all the Departments at Washington; and in the postal and customs services the ratio of excepted places is smaller still.

The exception of examinations for promotion requires further notice. The need of caution in making the great changes which a new system involved, together with the fact that the commission had too much work at the outset, were perhaps in themselves adequate reasons for not dealing at once with the difficult subject of promotions. The act, moreover, recognizes the value of examinations as far greater for entering the service than for rising in it. It leaves their extension to promotions in the discretion of the President.

*

The difference between the value of competitive examinations for ad

This application of the spoils system is not a mere theory. It has been successfully made in the State of New York, where the spoils system was first, and has been, most effectively enforced. When Draper, a Republican, was collector at the port of New York, he removed a subordinate as often as every third day for a whole year. When Smyth, another Republican, succeeded Draper as collector in 1866 he removed 830 of his 903 Republican subordinates at the average rate of three every four days. When Grinnell, another Republican, succeeded Smyth as collector in 1869 he removed 510 out of his 892 Republican subordinates in sixteen months. When Murphy, another Republican, succeeded Grinnell as collector in 1870 he removed Republicans at the rate of three every five days until 338 had been cast out. It was the expectation of such spoils which gave each candidate for collector the party strength which secured his confirmation. Thus, during a period of five years in succession, collectors, all belonging to one party, for the purpose of patronage, made removals at a single office of members of their own party more frequently than at the rate of one every day. In 1,565 secular days 1,678 such removals were made. Upon the appointment of Mr. Arthur as collector in 1871 he put an end to this disgraceful proscription.

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