Page images
PDF
EPUB

a good many of these departures from the original conception of a written examination on account of the geographical problem. You can do certain things within a city that you cannot do over the entire state, and again you can do certain things within in the state that you cannot do over the entire nation. Also bear in mind the difficulty in a written examination, for instance, for a technical place, of covering the entire field and the difficulty of giving in one day a test of all a man has learned in a lifetime. If the system of civil service examinations fails to get results which can always be depended upon, these are some of the difficulties that we have to deal with.

DISCUSSION.

Hon. George G. Davidson, Jr., of the Buffalo Civil Service Commission.

The length of this meeting reminds me of a story which will take but a minute to tell. A small boy was out to dine and after he had eaten very heartily of a great many things he was asked if he wouldn't have something more to eat. He replied "No, thank you, I have had too much enough." There was a general laugh at the small boy's expense and he thought it was up to him to say something more, and he said, "I didn't mean that," he said, "I mean I have had more than I didn't want." Now, if I should make any very extended remarks on this subject I think you would be in the position of that small boy.

The Buffalo civil service commission has made extensive use of practical examinations or practical tests. They have been applied in a great many different kinds of examinations. I will only take up one or two of those. They have been used in engineering examinations, for instance, rod men have been given a rod and the target fixed at a certain place and they have been asked to give the reading of various kinds of rods; they have been asked to set up the transit and it has been set at different angles and they have been asked to read the angles on the transit. We have had practical examinations for

drivers in the police department and in the fire department where the men get on the seats of one of the fire department wagons and drive over a certain course, go into the stables, clean the horse and harness him. This is accompanied by a certain written examination. We have had practical examinations for stenographers and a great many of the mechanical or skilled labor positions.

One of the most interesting was an examination for steam firemen conducted at the plant of the WashburnCrosby Company on the water-front. I believe there were about 39 applicants and these men were set to work firing the boilers. There was a large number of boilers. The men were directed to bring the steam up to a certain pressure and to keep it there. Some of the men would keep it an an even temperature, others would allow the temperature to drop, then rise again. There was one man in that examination who had learned something about the work of a steam fireman in a correspondence school and he was well posted and very ready with his answers, but one of the firemen who belonged at that plant who happened to look in the door when it was open, said, "Look at that. Why, that looks like a hay stack," and the steam pressure was changing up and down constantly. On the other hand there was a man who had been firing for a great many years who had had no schooling at all, he could probably do nothing more than write his name, but he had had charge of that sort of work in fresh and salt water, on land and on the ocean, knew how to repair a boiler, to clean it, to take care of it in every particular, and he kept the pressure at an even point all through his test.

Now, as Mr. Fowler said, a practical examination or a practical test should give the candidate a chance to do the precise thing which he is expected to do in the position which he seeks. We had another examination for steam firemen on the fire tugs which was practical to the last degree. The men were not only required to do the precise work of the position which they sought but they did it in the very place where they were to do it if they occupied the position. The applicants were taken down on the fire tugs and put to work firing the boilers to get

a certain pressure necessary to take these fire tugs out to the breakwater; when they reached the breakwater the fire tug was tied up there and then they were instructed to put on all pressure so that the fire hose could be played. Well, those fire tugs have some 12 or 15 nozzles and it requires a great deal of pressure. Those men were put through exactly the kind of work which they would do if they occupied those positions. In fact they were practically doing a day's work or half a day's work in that particular position. Now, in that test the men were doing the precise work of the position and in exactly the same place and under the same conditions in which they would be required to do it and it was a very easy matter to judge of their qualifications. There was no written. examination in that case and no other test whatever. I talked with some members of the commission before coming here as to practical tests which they had conducted and I got a very interesting list of them. I was quite surprised at the large number, but on account of the lateness of the hour I will not try to go into them at all. But it is a subject which is of very great interest to the members of the commission and I think the nearer that the commission can keep to practical tests the nearer they will be to the ideal form of examination.

The Situation in Philadelphia.

FULLERTON L. WALDO, SECRETARY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA CIVIL SERVICE REFORM ASSOCIATION.

That stormy petrel of English politics, Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking before a Birmingham constituency against the corporation of the city in 1884, said: "Every one of their employees knows that he holds his office, his position, his employment, upon the distinct understanding that in all political and municipal matters he must blindly submit himself; and upon the slightest sign of independence-to say nothing of opposition-he will lose his employment; he will be thrown upon the world with all his family, even if it should lead to his ruin or his starvation."

What Lord Randolph Churchill said of the corporation of Birmingham in 1884 is literally true of the “organization" government in Philadelphia in 1907. Every city employee knows what is expected of him, and understands. that disobedience spells ruin.

The trouble in Philadelphia is, that the administration. of the law is in the hands of men who are no friends of it. When they do not actively connive to violate the law, they wink at its non-enforcement. In 1905 when Rolla Dance was secretary of the civil service board, a patrolman was certified for appointment who had been five times arrested for drunkeness and once sentenced to two years in prison for assault with intent to kill. The administration of the civil service provisions of the Bullitt Bill at that time was a farce; at present, with the commission appointed by Mayor Reyburn, it has been elevated to the dignity of a comedy. There was a period in between when the civil service law was honestly and capably administered, by men who not only believed in it but know something about it. Mr. Frank M. Riter and Mr. Foss and Mr. Sanders were intelligently faithful

to their trust. In the transactions of the board of which Rolla Dance was secretary, the public had no confidence whatever. In nine months of his administration only nineteen hundred persons appeared to take civil service examinations; in nine months of the Riter-Foss regime, fifty-five hundred persons submitted to the ordeal. And as to promotion-examinations the case is similar. With Rolla Dance to mete out justice, in February, 1905, twelve patrolmen took the examination for promotion to sergeant; in April ten men appeared. In the following September, with Mr. Riter in charge, 148 men took the promotion examination, and in March, 1906, 152. The difference concretely illustrates the change in the attitude of the public from a suspicious timorousness under the old regime of exclusive and impenetrable secrecy, to an enthusiastic confidence in the freedom and fairness of the examinations as conducted by Mr. Riter and Mr. Foss. There has been a retrograde swing of the pendulum recently the city has lost the services of the two men who put 8,300 city positions on a proper civil service basis, and kept them there. Mayor Weaver violated a pledge to get rid of one of them; Mayor Reyburn has effected a political removal of the other. The commissioners at the present moment are men who are more amenable to political influences. They have reverted to Rolla Dance's policy. The "books of the firm" are not open to inspection. The public is shut out from what goes on in the office. Although the act of March 5, 1906, specifically provides that the records of the commission shall, subject to reasonable regulation, be open to public inspection, the present commissioners have construed the act so unreasonably as to hold that, under the act, any and all persons may be, and hereby are, excluded from access to their archives. In consequence, the Reform Association has had to bring mandamus proceedings, that its secretary may see the written entries with regard to appointments and discharges.

Ex-Governor Pennypacker, in a speech before the Philobiblon Club the other day, said that the Shern Act, signed by him February 15, 1906, "forever puts it out of

« PreviousContinue »