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mission and for promotion is plain enough. The applicant for original entrance to the service is a stranger to the head of the office and ignorant of its duties. But those who seek promotion are well known to the head of the bureau or office. They have served under his own eyes. No one knows so well as he their capacity or the qualifications needed in the vacant place. They are seeking places of authority where discretion, a sense of justice, facility in arranging and dispatching business, capacity for discipline and for command are not only the most essential qualifications, but are the most difficult of all to be tested by examinations.

Yet there are parts of the service in which examination for promotion may be of great advantage.

The principal causes of unjust promotions, in the absence of examinations, are (1) importunate solicitations and coercive influence from the outside; and (2) prejudice, favoritism, or corruption on the part of the appointing officers. We need not stop to inquire which class of these abuses is the most frequent or pernicious. The first thing essential is a real liberty of choice on the part of the appointing officers to promote the most worthy. Then we can deal with prejudice and favoritism within the offices. We can then also consider the relative claims of superior capacity, seniority, and well-tested fidelity, which help to complicate the whole subject of promotions and require the most careful consideration.

The outside interference is far more indefensible, if not more pernicious, in regard to promotions than in regard to original admissions. For the importunate backer of a new man may perhaps know something of the merits of the friend he pushes; but it is sheer presumption for an outsider, ignorant as he must be of the duties of those in a bureau, to assume to instruct the officer at the head as to the merits of those who have served under him for years. Nevertheless, and in plain repugnance to the spirit of the tenth section of the civil service act, the duty of promoting is now seriously embarrassed by solicitations and the coercive influence of persons having no right of interference, nor means of judging of the usefulness of the candidate. In some of the best governed countries such intrusion in behalf of a favorite has not only been condemned by regulations, but the favorite is himself treated as the secret promoter of the intervention. He is therefore held ineligible for promotion until he has purged himself of the connivance of which he is assumed to be guilty. Here is a great step towards freedom of choice by the appointing power in the matter of promotions.

Members of Congress have set a self-denying and patriotic example, in the same spirit, in the tenth section of the civil service act which in substance, and it would seem, in legal effect, forbids every appointing officer receiving or considering any recommendation on the part of a member of Congress except as to character or residence. In law, a promotion is in a certain sense an appointment. If others having no duty

in the matter would follow this example of forbearance, it might be made almost as practicable for any one to rise in the service, as it now is for any one to enter it, on personal merit.

PROBATION.

The rules provide for a probationary service of six months before any absolute appointment can be made. At the end of this time the appointee goes out of the service unless then reappointed. During the probation, the character of the service rendered by the probationer and his fidelity are carefully observed, as the question of a permanent appointment depends upon them.

The probation is a practical scrutiny continued through six months in the very work which the applicant is to do. In this part of the system candid persons will find a sufficient answer to the common and oft-repeated objections based on the assumption that no merely literary examination can show all the qualities required in a good officer. Nobody pretends that an examination in any branch of learning is an adequate test of business capacity. Congress clearly recognized its inadequacy, and therefore provided that in all cases "there shall be a period of probation before any absolute appointment or employment." Instead of this practical test being foreign to the competitive system, it is original with that system and is everywhere an important part of it.

It has been shown, moreover, upon each of the several trials of competitive examinations that in a large majority of instances the superior men in the competitions are also the superior men in the public work. The proportion, among very bright minds, of those who have good business capacity is at least as great as the proportion of those having that capacity among men of very dull minds. Between these extremes, they who excel in the schools do so by reason of the fidelity, patient labor, and good babits-qualities which also fit them for the public service.

Probation, in its short trial under the Civil Service act, has borne testimony to these antecedent probabilities, proving that the best men for the work of the Government, in the class which seeks to enter its service, are to be found among those who stand highest in the examinations. The first person to enter the public service anywhere under the present rules-a young man at the post-office at Saint Louis-was the first in the competition, and he was the first to be promoted for merit at the end of his probation. The first person appointed under the rules to a department at Washington, was a lady who stood first on the competitive list of her sex. Her practical capacity has proved to be as excellent as her attainments.

THE COMMISSION HAS NO PATRONAGE.

After so full an explanation of the new methods, it would seem superfluous to add that the Commission does not dispense patronage, and

that it has no power or opportunity to influence appointments or promotions, but it receives many letters which show that the writers think otherwise. This misunderstanding arises from the old system, which made the belief almost universal that all appointments and promotions go by favor or influence.

Even if it be conceded that a Commissioner might be dishonest and bold enough to violate the eighth rule, and to incur the severe penalties of the fifth section of the act, for party or personal ends, it is plain that no applicant could be unjustly refused an examination, that none could be notified for examination, or certified for appointment, out of the proper order, without the knowledge of the three Commissioners and the secretary, of whom two are adherents of one party and two of the other. The facts are that of the 3,542 of persons who have been examined, the politics of not one has been known to either Commissioner at the time of his examination (except in the case of four or five personally known to one of the Commissioners), and that the politics of neither of those who have been appointed was known to either Commissioner at the time the certification was made.*

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE DIMINISHED.

Before the Civil Service act was passed the 14,000 places now classified were filled at the discretion of executive officers. If members of Congress had usurped the control of many of them, that fact did not make the filling of them less effective for the dominant party. The tenure of every place was the continuance of executive favor.

Under the merit system the consent of no executive officer is needed to give access to the examinations. The marking and grading which the applicant earns for himself compel his certification for appointment in the order of merit and apportionment. The mere opportunity of selecting one from four amounts to nothing in the way of patronage. It may fairly be said, therefore, that those thus entering the public service have put themselves into office. The places they fill are not only taken out of the patronage of the party in power, but they are taken out of patronage absolutely. They are made the prizes which merit earns for itself Every place added to the classified Civil Service is a diminution of executive patronage, and of the spoils which a party in power may award to its camp-followers.

THE COMMON SCHOOLS AND AN OFFICE-HOLDING CLASS.

The means by which, as we have seen, competitive examinations are surely breaking up the class monopoly of patronage, are equally certain *The letters received by the Commission indicate that there are some persons who have not taken notice that no influence is needed to enable any applicant to secure an examination, and others seem to think that the proper order of certification for appointments may be changed by solicitation, and therefore appeal to third persons to assist them. It is hardly necessary to say that such intervention of third parties is as unnecessary as it must be unavailing.

to prevent the growth of class monopoly or bureaucracy in the future. Under free competition no officer can award places to his favorites; no party can either make its platform a test for office-holding or exclude from the service the adherents of the other party.

The political opinions, the social standing, the occupations, the sympathies and theories of those who enter the classified service will be as varied as the character, the pursuits, and the feelings of that vast citizenship from which applicants now spontaneously seek the examinations and win their way to the offices. Once in office, they will be free, by reason of the manner in which it was secured, to discharge those political duties and co-operate in manly and honest ways within their party, as becomes every citizen of a republic.

It appears from statistics presented herewith that per 65 cent. of all those who have entered the service through competitive examinations were educated in the common schools alone. But the service has not been filled by boys and girls direct from these schools. The average age of all those appointed under the new system has been about 32 years. If we assume the average age of leaving the common schools to be 16 years, it appears that, taking all those appointed, there has been an average period of sixteen years of practical life between the schools and the public service. Nevertheless, if the making of that knowledge which all the people are taxed to teach to all the children a condition of office-holding creates a bureaucratic class, then, indeed, the results of the new system are admonishing. But if universal taxation for teaching the subjects named in the seventh rule is justifiable, then to require superior excellence therein to be made a test for appointments is a clear and obvious duty.

This, at least, is unquestionable: that the nation, by bestowing its offices upon the most meritorious of those whom the States have educated at public expense, will greatly honor and stimulate the publicschool system of the country.*

EFFECT OF THE RULES IN THE CUSTOMS OFFICES AND POST-OFFICES.

The period, during which vacancies have been filled on the basis of competition, is that between July 16 and January 16, though the examinations began in June.* The whole number of persons examined for the postal and customs service has been 2,758, of whom 1,585 were successful, having been graded above the minimum of sixty-five.

*

Thoughtful men are noticing the tendency of the new system to aid and honor the public schools. Governor Cleveland, of New York, for example, after stating in in his last message “that New York leads the States in the inauguration of a comprehensive system of civil service, " declares that "the children of our citizens are educated and trained in schools maintained at the common expense, and the people as a whole have a right to demand the selection for the public service of those whose natural aptitudes have been improved by the educational facilities furnished by the State."

* The earlier examinations were held as follows, "P. O." and "C. S." being used to indicate the post-office and customs service respectively: June 19, P. O., Chicago and

The whole number appointed in those offices has been 463.

The details of these examinations will be found in tables appended to the report.

The Commission has preferred that the collectors and postmasters should state in their own words (so far as space can be given to the subject) the practical effects of enforcing the rules in their offices.*

The language indicated as a quotation in the summary which follows is taken from the letters of the collectors or postmasters at the place indicated. The letters quoted are the answers of those officers to a request of the Commission for a frank expression of their views, and they are the more valuable by reason of the outspoken criticism and the practical suggestions they contain. No criticism or suggestion in these letters has been omitted in the summary.

In estimating the statements it contains these facts may be borne in mind:

1. That several at least of those officers had prepossessions against the new system, and its introduction caused them some inconvenience at first.*

2. That in the outset a distrust of the fairness of the examinations, a belief that they could be evaded, and a natural shrinking from a novel kind of publicity, would unite in dissuading persons from attending them.t

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CUSTOMS OFFICES.

BOSTON." The effect in this office has, in my judgment, been good. The effect on the public service has been good, so far as my observation extends." He thinks the system might be adapted to further test aptitude.

PORTLAND.-But one person has been appointed to a permanent posiNew Orleans; 20, C. S., Chicago and New Orleans; 22, P. O., Milwaukee; 23, P. O., Saint Louis; 25, P. O., Indianapolis; 26, P. O., Kansas City and Providence; 27, P. O., Detroit; 28, C. S., Detroit and Boston; 29, P. O., Buffalo, Boston, and Louisville, and C. S., Port Huron; July 2, P. O., Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Rochester; 5, C. S., Burlington, Vt.; 6, P. O., Albany and Pittsburgh; 7, C. S., Portland; 8, P. O.. Newark, N. J.; 9, C. S. and P. O., Philadelphia; 10 and 12, P. O., New York; 13, P. O., and 14, C. S., Baltimore; 18, C. S., New York; August 13, C. S., and 15, P. O., San Francisco. On July 12 and 13 examinations were held in Washington for the departmental service, and on July 26 for the Washington City P. O. All these examinations were competitive.

*No report from collectors, New Orleans and Port Huron, and postmaster, Cleveland. * For example, the postmaster at Saint Louis says: "A short time after my appoint ment to this office, I strenuously objected to the adoption of competitive examinations," &c.; but he adds: "I am convinced that it is not only practicable and equitable, but a saving of great embarrassment," &c.

+ The postmaster at Buffalo, for example, re ferring to the four examinations for his office, says that, "owing to a fear of undue rigor on the part of some, and a feeling of distrust on the part of others, the first two postal notices met with few responses, but as the general public gained information on the subject, and were convinced that it was the purpose of the authorities to carry out the provisions of the measure, the classes filled up with good material," &c.

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