dependent upon compensation, will be based upon his or her equivalent annual compensation.

The classes indicate the several grand divisions of the service. The subdivisions are intended to mark the distinct kinds of qualification necessary in each class, and the grades in the subdivisions are designed as steps for advancement by formal promotion.

The omission in the above classification of any official designation or appellation of a position in the service will not exclude such position from the classification, as it will be comprised in the class to which it belongs by the general specification of such class.

REPORT OF THE CHIEF EXAMINER

RELATIVE TO

SUBJECTS AND SCOPE OF EXAMINATIONS.

Hon. JOHN JAY,

Chairman New York Civil Service Commission : SIR- I have the honor to make the following report in regard to the general features of the examinations to be held under the Civil Service rules.

At the outset you have thought best to include in the schedule of positions to be filled by open, competitive examinations, only those representing groups, and not those isolated or aggregating but two or three at any place. In this decision you have been supported by the consideration that open competition gives the largest number of eligible candidates, and the groups in question require such a reserved store for frequent drafts as vacancies occur. Such groups were found, in our State service, in the clerkships and positions of office messenger, orderlies in public buildings, guards in prisons, and teachers in asylums and reformatories.

The application of the plan of open competitive examinations to clerkships is not experimental; it has been in successful operation in some branches of the United States service at New York city for over four years past, and at an earlier date (1872-74) in the departments at Washington, and resumed there recently under the Civil Service Act. Reference might also be made to the longer experience (since 1870) in the British service. The results of the method have been at all points favorable.

As has been elsewhere stated, the absolute lack of any organization in the State service made it necessary for the Commission to divide the clerks into several grades, based upon annual compensation. Such gradation is to be considered as merely tenative, pending a proper and permanent organization by statute. No clerk at present has any assured position or compensation, since the head of the office, in the distribution of his "lump" appropriation, may reduce or increase at will the compensation of any clerk, and repeat this as often as is his

whim, so long as the annual aggregate is not exceeded. This discretion, so far as increase of pay is concerned, is now controlled by the Civil Service rules, so as to prevent a merely discretionary promotion from one grade to another, but in the absence of any legal determination of salaries there remains a large field for discretion within the limits of a single grade. Further reference to this point will be made in treating of examinations for promotion,

In a survey of the whole service it was found that there was an almost entire lack of the two lower grades of clerkships at Albany, while there was a similar deficiency as to the third grade in the service outside of the departments at Albany. It has, therefore, been necessary to open the lowest three grades to competition, since some one of the three is at each of the several points the grade for entrance. The first and second grades may, therefore, be considered the grades for entrance in this class of the service outside of Albany, and the third as the grade for entrance at Albany.

The scheme of examination for the first and second grades has been established as follows:

4. Spelling......

5. Arithmetic, viz.: numeration, addition of columns, fractions, reduction of weights and measures...

Total...

OPTIONAL SUBJECTS.

13D2

3

10

Elements of book-keeping.

Type-writing.

Special qualification for any department of the civil service specified by the applicant.

This is a simple test and if used as a standard in a pass examination would seem ridiculously inadequate. It is one of the advantages of the competitive examination over the ordinary pass examination as hitherto conducted, that the scope may be less exacting. It would seem not difficult for a person of inferior qualification to pass such a test; in other words to get through passably. In some of the subjects it would be difficult to mark his standing, as in an isolated case there is no comparative standard, except absolute perfection or absolute ignorance. With a single nominee before them, the examiners are more accessible to the personal considerations; failure or sucess apparently affects but one person, the nominee, and the examiners may readily be moved to depreciate his shortcomings from a desire to save his pride. In a competitive examination, on the other hand, there is a relative marking on an extended scale, and while it may not admit of exact accuracy, it is practically correct as a relative measure of the competitors.

It may also be accepted as a general deduction from all past experience that no matter how carefully the standard for pass examinations is originally fixed, where there are many who strive in succession for similar positions, there is almost inevitably a gradual relaxation; the height of the leaping bar slips lower, even if the honest umpire tries to keep his muscles braced and the bar undepressed. This is particularly so where the examiner performs his duties ex officio, and deems it merely a contingent and minor part of his duty to the service. The result is, that in order to secure somebody more than merely passable, and conceding the honest intent of all concerned, the standard must be placed so high that even a little leniency on the part of the examiner will not admit a person of indifferent fitness. In a competitive examination there is an emulation that leads to the highest endeavor on the part of each; the effort is not to just pass a certain minimum point but to excel all the other competitors and the probabilities are that many will be graded justly far above the minimum. There is no inducement of leniency, as for a single aspirant, but the ardor of the contest leads to an exactness of estimate with consequent gain to the interests of the service.

This digression has been induced by a desire to expose one of the minor objections to the ordinary pass examinations which has not usually been appreciated.

The first subject in the above scheme is "writing from dictation," which besides affording an excellent test of handwriting and spelling, has a distinct value in itself. It is to a certain extent a measure of certain qualities very valuable in a clerk; such as attention and the power of concentration upon any task in hand. A competitor who correctly transcribes the matter dictated, omitting or substituting no words, without repetitions or erasures, is a man who in a business affair has his wits about him." If, in addition, his manuscript is neatly written, without blots and correctly spaced, he has matured habits of order. It is often asked, "why examine in dictation when it may not be required in the position sought ?" and the above may explain that a certain measuring scale may be useful to the examiner and not specially needful to the examined.

Handwriting is also better tested by the exercise for dictation than by mere copying at leisure. In the latter case, it is not the regular business hand that is exhibited, but such a specimen as time and decorative taste may combine in producing, and the subsequent test of "copying from manuscript" gives an opportunity for each competitor to give such a specimen.

Spelling is also more fairly tested by the dictation exercise than by orally propounding unrelated words to be spelled, as in the latter case there is a tendency to select difficult words not often used. It is also superior to the method of giving written examples of incorrect spelling to be corrected. The competitor under a strain to correct the errors is bewildered and hesitates, and then is generally apt to go astray even in regard to words that presented orally he would spell right. Nearly every one has experienced this tendency to error in spelling, the moment a doubt intervenes, and such a doubt readily arises in the presence of an array of mis-spelt words.

Copying from a manuscript, wherein there are interlineations, abbreviations, erasures and other features of an original draft, is a practical test of a kind of work that will probably fall to every clerk in the lower grades, and in some cases may be his main work.

The arithmetical testsar e very simple, but can be so prepared as to test skill in the fundamental processes and also in the reduction of weights and measures, such as are employed by statistical clerks and inspectors of cargoes in the department of public works.

The relative weights are adapted to the relative importance of the several subjects. Handwriting and arithmetic are given the highest value, as these are the most important requisites. This matter of relative weights will be more fully explained beyond.

The above subjects conclude the obligatory part of the examination to which each competitor must be submitted. As a novel feature in competitive examinations in this country there have been added certain subjects, in any of which it is optional for each competitor to be examined. There are certain qualifications not required in every clerkship and which it is not probable every applicant would possess; they are, however, important and indeed essential in some positions, and if the higher ones are included, in so many, that it was thought best not to differentiate them as special and expert, but to so adapt the general examinations for clerkships, that those claiming these qualifications would be entitled to have them tested, and if sufficiently qualified, to have their standing recorded. This broad method gives appointing officers a better opportunity to secure those best fitted for such duties as may be peculiar. What is probably more important is the relation these qualifications may bear, not directly to the first position the successful applicant may fill, but to those to which he may reasonably hope to be advanced. The rules contemplate the filling of vacancies in the higher positions by promotions from the lower grades of clerkships, and those who obtain these should be prepared, so far as is practicable, to undertake the duties of these higher positions when they have mastered the special, technical subjects which obtain in every public office.

The first of these optional subjects is elementary book-keeping. It has been proposed that book-keepers should be considered as a class distinct from clerks, and that their examination should be that of experts. This might be proper if the methods of official book-keeping in detail were the same as in mercantile book-keeping, but they are generally not identical. In the writer's experience, both in the United States and State service, the methods of keeping official accounts in most cases differ widely from the methods in commercial practice though based upon the same general principles; while it is seldom that a regular series of double-entry accounts are kept secundem artem, the relations of debit and credit charges are the same and must be clearly understood. In the third grade of clerkships the optional subject of book-keeping is intended to cover a more expert or trained knowledge of book-keeping, but in the two lower grades the inquiry will be confined to the elementary principles, so that a clerk coming