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THE

MEETINGS OF THE LEAGUE.

HE headquarters of the League during the meeting were at the Iroquois Hotel, Buffalo, New York. The proceedings at the sessions of the League, commencing on the afternoon of November 7, were as

FIRST SESSION.

IROQUOIS HOTEL,

follows:

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, NOVEMBER 7.

THE League convened at 2:50 P. M. In the absence

of the President and Vice-Presidents, the Chairman

of the Council, Mr. Richard H. Dana, presided.

The minutes of the last Annual Meeting having been printed and distributed, their reading was omitted.

Hon. James N. Adam, Mayor of Buffalo, delivered an address of welcome,' to which Mr. Dana, Chairman of the Council of the League, made response.

The following reports from the Associations composing the League and from the Auxiliaries were then read:

Mr. Walter J. Shepard submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Buffalo:

The association has had a very quiet year. The fact of the existence of the present civil service commission of the city made the more quiet time for the Civil Service Reform Association. I am very glad to state, because it can be stated truthfully, that we have one of the best, if not the best, commission that the city has ever had. Great credit is due to the Mayor for the appointment of this commission; great credit is due to the members of this commission, who give it the time and thought and devote a great deal of very active and hard work to carrying out the law. I can state that the commission enjoys the confidence of the community. Most of thosemany in Buffalo at least, are not aware of the fact that

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some ninety per cent of all the employees of the city, outside of the department of instruction, come under civil service rule. The public school teachers have a classified list of their own; there is a board of school examiners; and they don't properly come under civil service rules, but the great mass of public employees are subject to these same civil service rules. No fear or favor is knowingly shown. As a public employee myself I can testify to the character of the lists of clerks that have been submitted to the department with which I am connected, and so far as I am aware the appointments made from this list have been made by the various heads of departments with the intent of selecting the very best of the three names that have been certified to the department. That is a general rule. There are some exceptions to this rule. The local commission has had some differences with some of the departments. There are some cases now in courts to be litigated and they will undoubtedly finally decide it in a way, we believe, to be just and proper and in accordance with the civil service law.

I think that about covers the subject. There are many members of our association who are not members of the executive committee and who have paid their dues for years who sometimes wonder what the association is doing. I might state that our worthy treasurer sent a young man around a year or two ago to collect some dues. The young man was of a kindly, simple nature, and he called upon one member of our association and the man said to him, "Why, look here, I have been paying my dues for a number of years; what do I get for it? Just tell me what I get for my dues?" and the simple, confiding young man said, "Well, you get a receipt." I think, however, that it is well said that the members of the association of Buffalo have gotten more than a receipt for the dues they paid.

Mr. Egbert Robertson submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Chicago:

The work of the Chicago Association has been to a considerable degree consolidated with that of the Illinois Civil Service Association and I will try to make a report on the work of both asociations at the same time. There

The

are two general fields in which the associations have attempted to carry on some work-first, that of being in touch with the administration of the laws that exist and the other that of attempting to influence a progressive development of civil service legislation in the state. first branch of the work has been fairly successful, I should say. The city commission is thoroughly in sympathy with the city administration, and is an honorable commission and one that is thoroughly acquainted with the civil service law and entirely efficient. The same might be said of the county commission and of the state commission, of which Mr. Moulton, now a member of the Council of this organization, is the president.

Cases, of course, arise in which various members of the departments attempt, by means of the courts, to overrule decisions of the commission. Those have in many instances gone to the Supreme Court, and have uniformly, I think, resulted in fair decisions on the civil service law. The other field, that of attempting to influence progressive legislation in the way of civil service, has been very disappointing during the past year. There have been three pieces of legislation which have come up, which have been of considerable importance. One of these, involving changes in the state civil service law, designed principally to benefit the administration and make it more efficient along the technical lines, the state commission succeeded in getting through the legislature. The Cook County civil service bill which has been the most important piece of legislative work in the state, in the civil service field, failed of passage. As at present constituted the county civil service law is included in the general act creating the board of county commissioners in the various counties, and it is therefore held that the law applies only to those positions in the county offices which are under the jurisdiction of a board of county commissioners. That leaves at least half, probably more than half of the officers in Cook County, the county in which Chicago is situated, entirely out of the jurisdiction of the civil service law. The employees of the clerk's offices, the treasurer's office, the recorder's office and several others of the large county offices are still appointed

under the spoils system, and as was exemplified in the recent election, are discharged on the accession of the new administration and are appointed on the say-so of the various county central committeemen of the party in power, and are appointed strictly for political service and very little on the basis of merit. To remedy that condition a bill was introduced at the last session of the legislature creating a county civil service commission, independent of the board of commissioners so far as its jurisdiction was concerned. That bill was supported by practically every civic organization in the city of Chicago and by a number throughout the state. It was drafted under the immediate supervision of Mr. Brundage, the chairman of the board of county commissioners, and was in every way an admirable piece of legislation. Unfortunately the committee of the legislature seemed selected. with a view of preventing anything of that sort passing the legislature, and although delegations of citizens from various places in the county, including representatives of the present county commission, of the Civil Service Reform Association, the Union League Club, the Hamilton Club, the City Club,-practically all the civic organizations in the city, appeared more than once before that committee, they were unable to induce it to report the bill. The result was that it never got past first reading and reference to the committee, and there is very little prospect of its going through on the adjourned session which is now attempting to legislate down at Springfield in relation to the primary law.

The third piece of legislation was one about which there has been a good deal of difference of opinion among believers in civil service reform,—I refer to the new charter of the city of Chicago. That involved one or two points of which most of the members of the association have declared outspokenly in favor, namely, a little freer exercise of the right of discharge by the heads of departments and a little more leeway in the matter of promotional examinations, and those provisions were excellent. There was one extremely vicious provision giving a preference to Spanish War veterans which was included in the charter. As you all know, probably, the charter

failed of ratification by the voters and so the question has become of no importance so far as that is concerned, and any endeavor to improve the administration will have to be gone at in some other way.

The association has done not a great deal of work that we can tell about. It has kept, I think, very well in touch with the administration in the different departments and it has exercised some good influence perhaps in the way of carefully upholding the principles of the civil service law as already existing in the state.

Mr. Charles G. Morris submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Connecticut:

Connecticut during the year has passed through the throes of a legislative session at which amendments were offered to the city charters of Hartford, Bridgeport and New Britain incorporating civil service provisions. The resolution amending the charter of the city of Hartford was the most comprehensive, and provided for the establishment of a civil service board with ample powers and duties. This resolution was passed unanimously by both boards of the common council, and it was the expressed wish of the Hartford municipal government that the resolution should pass the legislature as drafted. There were many active politicians in Hartford, however, who were opposed to it, and two sections were added, one of which practically exempted all policemen from the operations of the rules for the next twenty years; the other required a referendum vote at the next mayoralty election in April, which was intended to inject a new issue into the campaign and draw the opposition of many city officials, including members of both the fire and police departments. Upon disagreeing action between the senate and the house, the resolution went to a committee of conference, consisting of Hon. Patrick McGovern, of the senate. and Messrs. Hooker and Smith, who were the two Hartford representatives. They were careful not to come to an agreement and the bill was killed.

The proposed amendments to the charters of the cities of Bridgeport and New Britain were less comprehensive than that to the Hartford charter, and had to do mainly

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