In the Departmental service, it embraces places from and including those giving a salary of $720 a year, to and including those giving a salary of $2,000 or over. But there are yet various exceptions, mainly incident to incongruous laws in force prior to the Civil Service Act. Nevertheless, the examinations extend to all places or offices above the grade of workmen or laborers who serve regularly in the Depart ments at Washington, except about 500, which are inclusive of all officers confirmed by the Senate. These positions not within the classification are set forth in Table No. 1, appended to this report. There is great need of a more uniform, consistent, and comprehensive arrangement of salaries to be made by law.

double sense. Laws passed in 1853 and 1855, now section 164, Revised Statutes, required the clerks in the Departments at Washington to be arranged in four classes on the basis of salaries, the salaries being respectively $1,200, $1,400, $1,600, $1,800. In a sense this may be called a classification of clerks. This arrangement in classes did not extend to either the Customs or the Postal service. Since those dates there have been clerkships created with salaries of $1,000, $900, $840, $720, &c. The practical results are that officials in the different Departments, doing the same kind or quality of work, sometimes have very different salaries. Such was the condition when the Civil Service Act was passed, and Congress has not provided a remedy.

That act did not undertake to deal with salaries. Neither the Commission nor the President has any authority to make salaries just for the work done or uniform for doing the same work. Congress alone has authority in such matters.

The object of the Civil-Service Act was to secure proper capacity and character for doing the public work of various kinds, whatever compensation Congress might choose to provide for doing it. The act, however, so far recognized the old classes of clerks as to provide, in its sixth section, that examinations should be required for entering the parts of the service at Washington for which these salaries are provided. It further provided for a distinct kind of classification, to-wit, a classification of places (having reference to salaries as they then were or might be changed by Congress) for the purpose of the examinations, which the seventh section requires, for filling the places that shall be classified. In the making of this new kind of classification, authority was given for bringing into it, in the Departments at Washington, other places than those covered either by the four original grades of clerkships named or by the several grades of salaries mentioned below $1,200 a year. In the exercise of this authority, the Agricultural Department and places giving a salary of $2,000 a year in the Interior Department have been brought into the "Classified Departmental service," and hence made subject to the examinations. Under the same authority, also, the classified Postal service and the classified Customs service have been brought under the examinations. By virtue of the same authority the President may require other Executive offices to be brought within the Classified service, and, in that event, the offices that may be classified can be filled only by selections from those who shall have been examined; always excepting the places covered by rule 19 from the requirements of examination.

The Classified service (or the Classified Civil service) will, therefore, at all times, mean the aggregate offices and places in the three branches of the service which are, or at any time may be, thus grouped and comprehended, for the purpose of the enforcement of the system of examinations required by the Civil Service Act of January 16, 1883.

If Congress should fix the salaries of clerks with more reference to justice and uniformity, that Classified service might need to have its limits defined in terms having due reference to the new salaries, but in substance it would be the same part of the Executive Civil service as before.

In the Customs service the places giving $900 a year, and all those giving a larger salary, where the appointee is not subject to confirmation by the Senate, are included in the classification. In the Postal service all places above the grade of a laborer are included.

To each of the three branches of the service, Rule 19, with its exceptions, applies; the exceptions under this rule, however, are not from the classification, but only from the examinations.

The customs districts and the post-offices included are those districts or offices in or at which 50 or more officials are employed. This brings within the examinations those large departments and offices where it is most difficult for the superior officials to learn the character and qualifications of those seeking places, and where, for that and other reasons, political and social influences are most likely to be vicious and effective. The number of carriers, clerks, and employés in the Postal service now within the range of the examinations is but a trifle less than onehalf of all the officials of those grades at all the post-offices of the Union. At the customs offices for which examinations are held, 95 per cent. of all the customs revenue of the Union is collected and more than fivesevenths of the customs officials are employed. Other customs offices will, in the near future, have more than fifty officials, and hence will come under the examinations. Nothing, therefore, short of a restoration of proscription, favoritism, and patronage, by the exercise of legis lative authority, can arrest the steady growth of the new system based on competitive examinations.

In seeking to make the examinations as practical and appropriate as possible for testing the precise qualifications needed in the three branches of the service, the Commission provides distinct examinations for each of these branches. No applicant, therefore, whether examined for the Departmental, the Customs, or the Postal service, can by virtue of that examination be admitted to either of the other two branches.

Still further adapting the questions to the needs of the several parts of each branch of the service, there are distinct series of questions for the several grades in each of these branches, as for carriers, clerks, porters, messengers, &c., in the Postal service; for clerks, inspectors, night inspectors, weighers, gaugers, examiners, &c., in the Customs service; and for different grades of clerks and for particular offices needing pe culiar capacity in the Departmental service, as to which a fuller explanation will be given.

DEPARTMENTAL EXAMINATIONS.

There are two distinct grades of examinations for ordinary departmental clerkships, each of which is common for all the places in each of the Departments at Washington for which it is appropriate. In other words, these mere clerkship examinations are not held separately for any Department, but jointly for all of them. The places to be filled from these two grades of examinations embrace about 90 per cent. of all the

clerkships in the Departments. No separate examination is held for any place in either Department which is within the range of either of these two grades of examinations. The other 10 per cent. of the Departmental service is reached through various Special or Supplementary examinations which are appropriate for testing the peculiar, and, in general, the higher attainments which are essential in the parts of the service for which the Special and Supplementary examinations respectively are provided.

The two grades of clerkship examinations referred to are designated the General Examination and the Limited Examination. The subjects covered by each may be found in Rule 7 and in the Instructions to Applicants, to be found in Appendix No. 5.

There are a considerable number of clerkships in the Departmental service for which only very limited attainments, little beyond penmanship and the capacity to spell ordinary words and to apply the elementary rules of arithmetic, are required. For these places the Limited Examination is provided. A promotion, however, beyond a salary of $900 a year cannot be made within two years after appointment from a Limited Examination without passing the General Examination. (See Rule 21, in Appendix No. 2.)

It should be observed, in regard to the General Examinations, that they include no foreign language, no technical word, no terms of art or science, no problem in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, or astronomy, no question concerning the history or geography of any foreign country; nothing, in short, beyond, and not everything within, the teaching of a good public school; facts which should silence much of the criticism of the ignorant, even if they fail to meet the approval of the educated. In Appendix No. 7 may be found examples of the questions used at the General and Limited Examinations, which are fair specimens of the whole of them.*

Special Departmental Examinations.-For the State Department, the Patent Office, the Pension Office, the Geological Survey, and the Signal Office, in grades above ordinary clerkships, special examinations are held. Examinations in special subjects are also held, supplementary to, and commonly at the same time with, the General and Limited examinations, for places in which a knowledge of law, medicine, stenography, type-writing, book-keeping, or of the French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian language is required. Specimens of the questions used on these examinations are supplied to applicants. desiring them, but they would occupy too much space in this report. The distinction between a Special Examination and a Supplementary

It is to be hoped that this definite statement of the facts will prevent it being again falsely represented, even in journals hostile to the cause of reform, that questions of a scientific and literary character, used only in case of the special examinations where they are essential, are a part of the examinations for clerkships, where, in fact they are never allowed.

Examination is this: that the former is complete in itself, and does not include either a general or limited examination as a part of it, whereas a Supplementary Examination is preceded by, and in part made up of, either a General or Limited Examination, with some technical subject added, and the general or limited part may be marked separately and put the applicant on a register. See table relating to special and sup. plementary examinations in Appendix No. 6.

Questions. In order to secure uniformity and justice, the questions for all these Departmental examinations, as well as for all examinations for the Postal service and the Customs service, are prepared at Washington under the supervision of the Commission, and the examination papers of all applicants for the Departmental service are marked by the proper examining board at Washington. Due consideration of these facts will save unwarranted criticisms based on an assumed lack of capacity on the part of the local examiners for preparing or marking questions for the Departmental service. They merely see that the examinations are conducted in a fair and orderly manner.

Numbers examined for the Departmental Service. The whole number examined for the Departmental service during the past year, ending January 16, 1886, has been 1,277, of whom 972 were males and 305 were females. Of the males, 595 attained the grade of sixty-five or upwards; of the females, 231 attained that grade.

Further particulars of these examinations, and of the special and supplementary examinations, can be found in the tables in Appendix No. 6, and in the Instructions for Applicants in Appendix No. 5.

Appointments to the Departmental service.-The whole number of ap pointments during the past year, ending January 16, 1886, to the Departmental service from those examined has been 234, of whom 204 were males and 30 were females. If to these we add the numbers appointed during the previous eighteen months, it will appear that there have been 725 appointments to the Departmental service in two and one-half years prior to January 16, 1886, from those examined under the Commission.*

The residence and apportionment of those appointed to the Departmental service during the past year appear in Table No. 5 of Appendix No. 6, except that the original appointments to the Pension service, under the act of March 3, 1885, were apportioned separately. This apportionment appears in Table No. 6 of that Appendix. Special Rule No. 4, under which the apportionment was made, is given in Appendix No. 2.

Appointments after probation, promotions, resignations, and removals in the Departmental service.-(1) It is only in the Classified Departmental service that the facts in regard to permanent appointments and promotions can be set forth with sufficient precision to aid much in forming

*This number (725) includes not only those enumerated in the several apportionment tables in Appendix No. 6, but also 9 cases of transfer which are not apportioned.

correct conclusions as to the effects of the new system. The number of promotions of those appointed under the rules in this service during the year has been 82. (2) There have been during the year 385 cases in the Departmental service in which the probationary appointments of six months have expired. In every instance, except eleven, a permanent appointment has been made, and in one of these eleven cases the probationer has been restored. In the previous year there were only two cases, out of 109 of probationary terms expiring in the Departmental service, of a failure to secure a permanent appointment. (3) There have been during the year eleven removals among those appointed to the Departmental service who had been examined under the Commission. One of these removals appears to have been only a discharge by reason of the completion of the work in hand. During the previous year there were but three cases of removal from among the 438 appointments made to that service.

Taking the aggregates, therefore, in the Departmental service for two years, we have these results: At the expiration of 494 probationary terms there have been 13 failures to secure a permanent appointment; and of the 725 persons appointed after passing the examinations 14 have been removed. In other words, one in 38 of those put on probation has been found unsatisfactory at the end of the six months; and less than one in 50 of those who have been appointed has been removed in two and one-half years, within which a change of administration has taken place. The just inference in favor of the good character and efficiency of those appointed under the new system, and of its adequacy as a practical test to be drawn from these facts, would seem to be too obvious for comment.

EXAMINATIONS AND APPOINTMENTS IN THE CUSTOMS SERVICE.

(1) The whole number examined during the year expiring January 16, 1886, for the Classified Customs service was 1,735, of whom 1,727 were males and 8 were females. The whole number who passed at a grade of sixty-five and upwards was 1,043.

(2) The whole number appointed during said year to the Classified Customs service was 169. Most of the customs offices do not find it practicable to employ any females. Adding those previously examined and appointed for the Customs service, we have an aggregate of 3,390 persons examined and of 357 appointed in two and one-half years. Further particulars of these examinations and of the appointments will be found in Table No. 9 of Appendix No. 6.

EXAMINATIONS AND APPOINTMENTS IN THE POSTAL SERVICE.

(1) The whole number examined for the Postal service during the year ending January 16, 1886, was 4,113, of whom 3,715 were males and 398 were females.