employed in that capacity. The whole number of laborers on the pay-rolls of the city, December 1, 1885, in the departments covered by the rules, was 2,612. The number was considerably larger when the rules went into operation on March thirtieth, as several hundred extra men were added to the rolls of the paving department just before that date, in order to furnish a contingent force from which to draw during the season without calling upon this office.

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Owing to the depression in business, there were a large number of unemployed laborers in Boston at the time the rules went into operation. The duty of making an impartial selection for registra tion was both difficult and delicate. To register all the unemployed, and give them the idea that they would eventually get city work, would have had a very bad effect on the labor market. It was decided, therefore, that when the number of applications received was sufficient to meet all probable demands for a period of six months or more, registration should cease, except in the case of applicants who had served in time of war, and received an honorable discharge.

"The limit of registration having been fixed in advance, the first applicants (up to that limit) who produced satisfactory certificates as to character and capacity were furnished with numbers, which admitted them in regular order and at stated time, to furnish the information required by the rules In this way the requisite number was obtained without excitement or disorder, or any charges of unfairness. Every man who applied in season, and could produce his certificates, had an opportunity to register. It was not necessary that he should know how to read or write; it was only necessary that he should be honest, of sober and industrious habits, and sufficiently able-bodied to do the work for which he applied. The statement which he was called upon to make, under oath, was as follows, the parts in italics being filled up by the clerk :

"I, John Smith, hereby declare that I am thirty years of age; that I am now living at 200 Prince street; I am a citizen of the United States; that I have depending upon me for support a wife and three children; that I was in the military service of the United States as a private for three years in time of war; that I received an honorable discharge therefrom; that I was last employed by Brown & Co., as a teamster, for two years; that I was previously employed as a common laborer on city work; and [Assembly, No. 34.]

that I am qualified by experience to perform the duties of a teamster; that I am not a vender of intoxicating liquors, or in the habit of using intoxicating liquors to excess; that I have not been convicted of any offense against the laws of the commonwealth during the year last past.'

"As to the success attending the administration of this division of the service, the commissioners are permitted to quote the words used by his Honor the Mayor of Boston, in a recent speech. He said: 'I can certainly testify that it has been a great relief to the city of Boston that the Civil Service Commission has taken care of the laboring population. No men have been more abused than the laborers. They have been made the tools of political tricksters, and with Civil Service reform enforced they are no longer in the hands of political tricksters.'

"Mayor Grace, of New York, further says in connection with the labor question: The appointment of persons in various departments nominally as laborers, but really to fill clerical or other positions, with the view of recommending them for promotion shortly after their appointment as laborers. In this way they would not, under the rules, enter into competition with applicants generally, but only with those applying for promotion. To guard against this evil, I have, with the approval of the State Commis. sion, modified the rule so as to provide that no person shall be eligible to compete for promotion from a position, for which he has not passed a competitive examination, until he has been in the service a year. It may be that the rule on this subject will be required to be made even more rigid, but the amendment has not been enforced for a sufficient period to enable me to determine definitely on this subject.'"

INJUSTICE OF NON-COMPETITIVE POSITIONS.

Public officials who are urgent for non-competitive positions, in order to give places to their friends or to please influential politicians, strangely overlook one consequence of their mistake.

If a position is non-competitive for an officer to fill according to his pleasure in case his nominee can barely pass the minimum, it will be non-competitive for his successor, who will be able to remove summarily the experienced subordinate and install his own friend, or some one to please an influential party adherent. This is unjust

to the subordinate, who is thrown out for no fault on his part, no matter how meritorious his record may be, just when he has become accustomed to his place, and partially, at least unfitted for other business. It is also prejudicial to the service. It turns out a man who has become sufficiently familiar with his duties to begin to be useful, and puts in an inexperienced man, who will have to spend nearly his whole official term in mastering his duties, only to be in turn dismissed and succeeded in like manner.

A man is not, as a rule, a useful public servant when he enters an office. He requires the training and discipline that only experience in an office can furnish. When experience has been added to his other qualifications he has reached the point of usefulness. He can then render a fair equivalent of service for his salary, and the public interests demand his retention, rather than the palpable folly of perpetual change, with its incidents of inexperience and incompetence.

No business can be successfully managed on such a system. And no rational business man would permit his business to be demoralized by dismissing competent subordinates only to employ others who have no training or experience because some friend of theirs may be pleased.

The delays, the lack of system, and the unfinished business that have been found to exist in some of the public departments are pregnant commentaries upon such a system.

Another grave objection to non-competitive positions is that they are a hinderance to promotions and transfers. There can be no promotion or transfer from a non-competitive to a competitive position without a competitive examination similar to that upon entering the service.

Promotions and transfers in such cases can only be made to other non-competitive positions. This often creates embarrassment, and is a serious obstruction to those in the service, by removing the stimulus of prospective promotion and fettering them to one position.

It is very obvious, therefore, that it is vastly better for subordinates themselves, and for the public interests, that non-competitive positions should be discountenanced, and as few in number as possible.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SERVICES IN REGARD TO PROMOTION.

Recent comments by a part of the American press on the announcement that on certain points the British Civil Service system is thought to require revision, and that a commission of investigation has been appointed, seem to have suggested a fear that the framers of the National American system, and of the system adopted in this State, have gravely erred in following the example which in this reform had been set by Great Britain, and which is now found to require amendment.

It may not be improper, for the avoidance of any misapprehersion or unjust prejudice on this point, to allude to the fact that the principles and methods which have been in part borrowed from Great Britain, and incorporated in the "Act to regulate and improve the Civil Service of the State of New York," have been thoroughly in accord with our traditional American ideas, which rest upon the great principles of magna charta and habeas corpus, and the bill of rights; of government in its three departments, legislative, executive and judicial; of legislation by two houses, and of the common law, with its marvelous wisdom, gathered through a thousand years, of which the Christianity of the Bible is a part, and which our ancestors adopted from Great Britain as the common law of the American republic.

The recent dissatisfaction with the British service appears to have arisen chiefly from two features which are quite apart from the general rule, and neither of which has been incorporated in our national or State system that of the division of the service by an impassible barrier, and that of promotion by seniority.

The last point, promotion by seniority, appears to have been approved as a measure tending to reform, in one of those acts passed in the last century, which mark the influence of the American war in reforming the erroneous theories and the practical abuses which had emphasized the policy of Great Britain toward the American colonies, and which at last led to the revolution.

The late Sir Thomas Erskine May, in his history, quotes the letter of a British general, written in 1758, which says, with a notable frankness of expression and with an exactness of statement which seems to justify in one sense the claim of antiquity sometimes made for the American spoils system; "As for civil officers

appointed for America, most of the places in the gift of the crown have been filled with broken-down members of Parliament, of bad if any principles, valets de chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery-servants. In one word, America has been for many years made the hospital of England."

When British bribery and corruption had done their part on both sides of the Atlantic to lose for England her American colonies, and when the surrender at Yorktown had convinced both the court and the people of Great Britian of the hopelessness of the attempt to subdue the colonies, the fall of the ministry of Lord North ushered in the cabinet of Lord Rockingham, which coupled with its policy of "independence to America" the administrative reform of which Pitt, Fox, Richmond and Sheridan were prominent promoters. Official interference with the freedom of elections led to an act in 1782, disabling certain officers connected with the customs, excise, and postoffice from giving their vote; and this restriction continued until 1868, when the right to vote was restored as one that could be safely allowed after the adoption of the merit system. That law was followed in 1784 by an act of singular thoroughness in reference to the India service, which made any officer guilty of a corrupt contract for office or employment guilty of a misdemeanor, and subjected one guilty of official misrepresentation to the forfeiture of his entire fortune, and this act to prevent promotion by favor and patronage based promotion mainly on seniority.

When in 1853 the report on the organization of the permanent Civil Service was made by Sir Stafford H. Northcote, now Lord Iddesleigh and Mr. C. E. Trevelyan, these gentlemen remarked (Report, p. 19) that "if the opinion of the gentlemen engaged in the Civil Service could be taken on the subject of promotion, it would probably be found that a very large majority of them would object strongly to what is called promotion by merit. The reason they would assign would be that promotion by (so-called) merit would usually become promotion by favoritism."

The admirable papers upon the proposed system, from some forty of the ablest writers in England, published by Parliament in 1855, showed a difference of opinion upon this point. Sir George Cornwall Lewis, for instance, said (page 121): "The report showed that a large majority of the members of the Civil Service prefer