SOLDIERS AND SAILORS.

This language from the last annual report may be fitly repeated here: "Every provision of law favorable to those who have rendered honorable service in the Army or Navy of the United States is preserved in the Civil Service Act and Rules, and in the latter (see Rule 12) these patriotic privileges have been in the matter of age and otherwise somewhat extended. Every person honorably discharged from such service by reason of disability incurred in the line of duty, if he shall exhibit the measure of capacity found to be essential in the Civil Service, is allowed a preference in certification for appointment."

There is nothing in the Civil Service Act or Rules which excludes any one from the public service or imposes any limitations by reason of the part taken in the late civil conflict, and no question or inquiry is ever allowed concerning the applicant's relation thereto.

RESIDENCE OF APPLICANTS.

Each applicant must declare his actual bona fide residence, under oath, in his application paper. He does so under the peril of indictment for perjury for any false statement. The Commission, as well as each Commissioner, invariably declines to become an adviser on this point. Very frequently some legal question is involved, and the Commission cannot undertake to construe the laws of all the States and Territories of the Union on the subject, even if they could conduct a correspondence in regard to the facts of each case. Besides, they ought to remain uncommitted and free to discharge their duty of bringing to the attention of the proper officer every case in which false statements may have been made in the application.

The question whether legal or mere temporary residence is intended arises under this law as well as under so many others. The Commission has assumed that legal residence is meant by the act. If mere present residence or place of sojournment should be treated as the intention of the Act, an applicant might fix it in any State to which he might go and remain only a week, perhaps for the very purpose of gaining a fictitious residence.

The custom of officers of the Government at Washington retaining or claiming 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 in the District of Columbia.

It is natural that at the seat of Government a large excess of applications 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 classified service in the ratio that it has increased the chances of those who reside elsewhere.

Some further considerations bearing on this subject may be found in Appendix No. 5, under the head of "Instructions to applicants,” and under "Dropping from the records, page 41.”

The following quotations are from the first annual report of the Commission:

REMOVALS.

"The power of removal and its exercise for just reason are essential both to the discipline and the efficiency of the public service. A life tenure, or any tenure which does not allow, a removal for inefficiency as well as delinquency, 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 dimin ished the pressure upon appointing officers for removals especially within the Classified service, 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, before the Civil Service Act, 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." In other words, the object was not to put a particular person out, but to get a particular person in.

"Nevertheless, save in the particulars mentioned, the power to remove for even the most partisan and selfish reasons remains, in a legal sense, unchanged. The changes are in the lost opportunity of filling the va cancy with favorites and henchmen, and in the greater peril from a frowning public opinion. The vacancy must be filled from the four certified under the Rules."

"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 and filling vacancies. 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, have demonstrated 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 un. equally upon each of the great parties."

It is now established by experience that under the new system, and even in a close national contest, the party in power cannot resort to the disastrous methods of using the authority of removal and appointment within the classified service to enlist workers and bribe voters. It is also made clear that the party out of power cannot in the future stimulate the greed of the worst of its followers by promising thousands of places in that service as the spoils of victory, for only the applicants successful in the examinations can secure the places. The basest elements in political contests are thus eliminated alike from the ranks of the assailants and the defenders of an administration.

Whether the partisan and vicious inducements to removals have been diminished by the new system, and how far removals were formerly made for such reasons alone, may, in some measure, be judged by these facts:

The First Annual Report of the Commission says: "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 bis 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."

Examinations for the Customs service at New York were introduced in 1871, and have been continued and greatly improved since. The well-known results have been that removals for mere partisan reasons have almost wholly come to an end, and that the efficiency, economy, and purity of the administration there have been greatly increased.

PROMOTIONS AND OTHER EXCEPTIONS FROM THE EXAMINATIONS.

The following is taken from the First Annual Report of the Commis sion:

"Rule 19, recognizing needs in the public service familiar to those acquainted with the conditions of good administration, allows the ap plicants for certain places to be appointed without examination. The confidential or fiduciary relations sustained by those who fill several 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 some of them, are the reasons for all but one of these exceptions, that of promotions.

"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 admission 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 essen tial 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 presump. tion 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 toward 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. It has been seriously complained that not a few clerks and other employés, finding this door of 'influence' still open, have persistently urged their members of Congress and other influential friends to visit the Departments and offices to obtain their advancement in rank or salary, and that influence has been successfully employed to secure the promotion of the less worthy over their deserving associates."

It is plain that, notwithstanding the difficulty of devising a system which shall give merit its just reward, and shall yet leave the appointing officer his full right and responsibility for his office, some rules upon the subject ought to be promulgated at the earliest day practicable.

The Commission's work has been so exacting during the past year that, contrary to its expectations, it has not been possible for it, up to this time, to treat the subject of promotions practically.

THE COMMISSION HAS NO PATRONAGE.

It seems almost superfluous to say that the Commission has no favors. to bestow and no patronage to dispense. It has no power or opportunity to influence appointments or promotions. But many letters 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 no one could be notified for examination, or certified for appointment, out of the proper order, without collusion among all three Commissioners and their subordinates.

Nothing, therefore, can be more unfounded than the belief, still entertained by some, that the Civil Service Law and Rules have but trans