to examine and certify for appointment to places requiring special or technical knowledge or skill such persons as demonstrate their fitness after due public notice, without regard to their places of legal residence. Appointments through transfer and various noncompetitive examinations, and the reinstatement of those entitled to that privilege under section 1754, Revised Statutes, also operate to prevent the maintenance of the apportionment with precision.

Except for eligibles who are preferred under section 1754, Revised Statutes, appointments in the departments at Washington as the result of the clerk, stenography and typewriting, and some other examinations must be from the State having eligibles which, at the time of the certification, has received the least proportional share of all appointments to the departments at Washington.

Appointments from the highly technical examinations are made from the persons having the qualifications desired from the eligibles standing highest in the whole country except those few States which at the time have a percentage of appointments greater than the average percentage of all the States.

The number of appointments charged to the District of Columbia early became so largely in excess of the number to which it was entitled that for several years past no persons residing in that District have been examined for positions subject to the apportionment except when there was not a sufficient number of applicants from elsewhere. As a rule, preference in certification to positions outside of Washington is given to eligibles having a local residence in the vicinity of the place where the vacancy exists.

A new apportionment has recently been calculated, and the following regulations adopted for carrying it into effect, beginning July 1, 1897:

(1) All separations of persons previously charged to the apportionment shall be hereafter credited.

(2) All appointments to the apportioned service through entrance examination, by reinstatement, by transfer, or otherwise, of persons for service in, or on direct detail from, any department or office in Washington, D. C., shall be charged to the apportionment.

(3) No appointment, as indicated in regulation 2, shall be made unless the State or Territory of which the persons to be certified are legal residents has at the time received a less per cent of appointments than any other State or Territory or the District of Columbia.

The following table shows the number of appointments made in the apportioned service from July 16, 1883, to December 31, 1897:

TABLE 18.-Contrast of apportionment under and outside the civil-service act to July 1, 1897.

NOTE. The appointments under the civil-service act have been apportioned among the States very nearly according to population. No such equalization was observed in the appointments made outside the act over which the Commission had no control. It is only under the civil-service act that a just apportionment is secured.

Table 19.—Number of appointments in the departmental service made from the several kinds of examinations during the year ended June 30, 1897.

TABLE 19.--Number of appointments in the departmental service made from the several kinds of examinations during the year ended June 30, 1897—Continued.

TABLE 19.-Number of appointments in the departmental service made from the several kinds of examinations during the year ended June 30, 1897-Continued. NOTE.-The education of the persons appointed through examinations for the departmental service during the year covered by this report is:

Many of these appointments were to places requiring technical qualifications in which a college education is essential, as patent examiners, meat inspectors, specialists in the Department of Agri. culture, etc. The statistics show that a common-school education is sufficient for entrance to the ordinary grades of the public service. It is not the students "fresh from school' who pass the exami nations most successfully, but those who are most capable of success in business or professional pur. suits. The examinations are of a practical and common-sense character, adapted to test the precise qualifications required in the places to be filled.

TABLE 20.-Removals, resignations, and deaths in the classified departmental service in the force appointed through examination and certification for the year ended June 30, 1897.

a Twelve of these were firemen in Federal buildings dropped at the end of the heating season.