school board, Mr. Gaither, a former president of the second branch of our city council, and myself, a former head of our city law department, had recently held office in a city in which party responsibility was the avowed working principle of the municipal administration! The truth is that the first flush of the early morning of the reform had faded into the light of common day. The rapid, irresistible expansion of the merit system in the province of the national government, under the tutelage of the recent Presidents, Republican and Democratic, who each bore himself as if he thought he would be dishonored by returning to the people without having extended its boundaries, the examples of decent, quiet, efficient administration set in late years by our local post office and custom house, the approval recently given by the voters of numerous cities in the Union to new municipal charters embracing the system, the benignant change wrought by its application to the public schools of Baltimore, the gradual growth of higher civic ideals and of the spirit of political independence among us, the steady and increasing pressure of an enlightened public opinion upon partisan bigotry and misguided popular prepossessions of every sort in our midst had opened the closed lids of our people, broken down the clods, and prepared the ground for the seed that the commission scattered. The response to the commission, so far as the press of Baltimore was concerned, left little to be desired. This press, one of the best allies that a free and intelligent people ever had, unhesitatingly ratified our work, including the merit system, supported our application to the legislature, and, in case this application was successful, stood ready to do its full share towards obtaining a favorable verdict from the voters. A few years ago even these newspapers, closely in touch as they have usually been with the higher welfare of the public, could scarcely have been induced to think that any charter stood the remotest chance of being enacted by our legislature which treated the mass of municipal offices as anything but party loot.

Another encouraging circumstance is the fact that notwithstanding the hostility of the bosses, enough of the city delegates voted together in committee to send the

bill back to the house with a favorable report, though, of course, majorities of this sort at this legislative stage are sometimes to some extent colorable only. Equally as encouraging is the circumstance that when the bill was tabled in defiance of the best legislative traditions of local self-government a large majority of the city delegates voted against the motion by which this was done. It is entirely possible, I need not say, that some of these persons would not have voted in the manner they did had they not known that the principle of local comity was not to be conceded to the bill, and that, in the divided state of the city delegation, spoilsmen from the counties would dispatch the bill even if its out-spoken opponents in the city delegation were in the minority. It is undeniable, however, that both in the committee room and on the floor of the house there was a considerable band of earnest and fearless men in the city delegation, like Dr. Ashby, Mr. Marriott and Mr. Girdwood, who strove for the passage of the bill by every means in their power.

It is also agreeable to note that the spoilsmen compassed the destruction of the bill despite the fact that, if it became an act, it was to be referred to the voters of the city for their approval or rejection. They knew too well what return the people of Baltimore would make to that referendum to anticipate a repetition of the success which they achieved in the early history of the merit system in this state when they actually stole the system from its parents, disfigured its features beyond recognition, as gipsies are said to do those of a child abducted by them, and, in this condition, which forced even its friends to oppose it, submitted it in the shape of an amendment to the state constitution to the people of Maryland for the very purpose of having it voted down and consigned to perpetual oblivion.

Altogether, therefore, we feel that our hopes will not continue to be falsified much longer. It is not so hard to fight the political machine in Baltimore, where the equilibrium of parties is so nice, when there is nothing but the political machine to fight. The contest is doubtful only when the bosses can enlist in their behalf some form of real popular support, born of prejudice or selfish

coincidence of interest. When the struggle on their part is simply a naked professional one for their purely class perquisites, they have a grim day indeed before them. This is precisely what the present struggle is, and our hands are greatly strengthened by the fact that we are not asking for the merit system as an isolated proposition but as a part only of a programme of extensive changes in our charter. Our antagonists can not deny us the merit system without denying to the city in every relation the privilege of conforming with the urgent laws of its growth. They are attempting the Japanese feat of tying down an oak to a flower pot. That is the situation which will be presented to the people of Baltimore when the agitation for the proposed city charter is revived, as it is about to be, by those civic associations which have come to exert such a commanding influence in the municipal life of Baltimore. Shall the subordinate civil service in Baltimore be filled by the public schools and honest labor relying only upon his own stout heart and arms, or shall it be filled by the politicians? That is the question which will shortly be addressed to the voters of Baltimore. I, for one, have but little doubt as to how it will be answered.

The Development of Efficiency in the
Civil Service.

ROBERT CATHERWOOD, PRESIDENT OF THE CHICAGO CIVIL
SERVICE REFORM ASSOCIATION.

The city of Chicago is a billion and a half dollar corporation, with an annual budget of $65,000,000, a payroll of $25,000,000, and about 23,000 employes. If it be true, as recently suggested by Mr. Louis Brandeis before the Interstate Commerce Commission, that the railroads of this country can save one million dollars a day by paying more attention to increasing efficiency and improving business methods, and if it be true that municipalities are not so well managed as railroads, the need for genuine development of efficiency in municipal service is very great.

This efficiency problem, we submit, is essentially and inherently a problem of civil service administration. In Chicago it happens to be, in addition, a problem imposed by statute upon the administrators of the city civil service law. The duty "of investigating from time to time the conduct and action of appointees in the classified service," practically the entire service of the city with a few exemptions, and of "inquiring as to the nature, tenure and compensation of all offices and places in the city service," is mandatory upon the civil service commission. It must also use "ascertained merit" as a basis for promotion and, without the approval of any other authority, make rules, the breach of which is punishable, for carrying out the purposes of the civil service act.

Formerly, it was supposed that, in practice, the civil service commission could concern itself only with entrance into and removal from the service-with the two ends but not the middle. The middle was left to department heads, who became indifferent because they could lay all evils at the door of the merit system. On the other hand, the commission, having done the best it could on

an examination, washed its hands of the city employe and paid no attention to him unless he reappeared before it on charges looking to removal. The civil service commission buried most of its mistakes, after the alleged manner of doctors of medicine. If, after certification. things went wrong, it was no business of the commission. This detachment of spirit from the practical daily problem of departmental administration and stern specialization on the front and back doors resulted in a situation which was no less than monstrous. The departmental trouble maker with a nice law point had, not only his day, but his weeks in court before the trial board. The commission went at a plain question of employment through pleas of "guilty" and "not guilty," answers, demurrers, rulings, citations of authorities and appeals. and, in the course of time, created a system of jurisprudence about the words "removed or discharged except for cause on written charges and after an opportunity to be heard in his own defence."

The courts of record, seeing all this law business going on so merrily before the civil service commission, took a hand in it themselves and began to elucidate the law with their usual clearness. Plainly, concentration on both ends was causing the middle to buckle. Was this the merit system which made responsibility uncertain, kept in service unfit men, tolerated ten men at one man's work, ignored conditions and methods in departments, denied intelligent co-operation to department heads, and had no concern where waste and inefficiency existed?

The concept of the unity of our municipal service; of the civil service commission as a body of employment experts, especially charged with the introduction and operation of working systems affecting the efficiency of employes, not apart from, but in intimate co-operation with the department heads; and of the commission as a constant force and source of expert advice for the promotion of efficiency and economy, gradually found favor with the people of Chicago. How to get a day's work for day's pay is not a departmental question, but a municipal question.

Now, attention to efficiency, through cost-figuring and recording, is as old as bookkeeping and scoring a ball