honest American of every condition in life, in my eyes, is a Sinbad already, but his burden is a loathsome "spoils " politician, reeking with the contagion of moral vileness. We must free our country from this miserable bondage; if that can be done, her soldiers will be in the future, as, after all has been said, they have always been in the past, those among her children of whom she has least cause to be ashamed.

1

THE CENSUS BUREAU.

TO THE NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE:

Your Special Investigating Committee, which examined among other things, the question of the desirability of classify ing the Census Bureau, begs leave to report as follows:

On March 16th last, Senator Chandler introduced a bill for taking the twelfth and every subsequent census. Section 3 of the bill provided that the employees of the Census Bureau should be appointed according to the provi sions of the Civil Service Act. The bill was referred to the Census Committee, and when it was reported Section 3 was stricken out, and a provision substituted that the employees should be appointed "according to the discretion of the Director of the Census, subject to such examination as said Director may with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior prescribe, and not otherwise."

The purpose of the Committee's substitute is to repeat the unfortunate experience of the last census in making the clerks and the employees of the office subject to political patronage. We desire to call attention to the evils which have resulted from this course, in

1st: The increased extravagance of the Bureau;
2d: The demoralization of the force employed;

3d: The worthlessness of a census so taken.

4th: The lack of public confidence in its accuracy and impartiality.

I.

The last census cost $10,620,000 (Cong. Record, December 16, 1897, page 214). The amount paid for salaries alone was $5,120,000. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Department of Labor, who had charge of the last Census Bu

reau for some years after the retirement of Mr. Robert P. Porter, as Superintendent, estimates that two million dollars and more than a year's time would have been saved if the Census force had been brought into the classified service. (Letter of Carroll D. Wright to Henry Cabot Lodge, Record of December 16, 1897, page 174.) Mr. Wright adds: “I do not hesitate to say that one-third of the amount expended under my own administration was absolutely wasted, and wasted principally on account of the fact that the office was not under Civil Service rules. . . . In October, 1893, when I took charge of the Census Office, there was an office force of 1,092. There had been a constant reduction for many months and this was kept up without cessation till the close of the census. There was never a month after October, 1893, that the clerical force reached the number then in office; nevertheless, while these general reductions were being made and in the absence of any necessity for the increase of the force, 389 new appointments were made."

That is, new appointments were made to a force where they were not needed, the new men replacing experienced clerks, and, in the words of Senator Lodge, "filling the office with beginners at the close of the work." This was manifestly done because these appointments were allowed to be political.

Mr. Porter disputes the estimate of Mr. Wright that the waste was as much as two million dollars from this cause alone. But whatever the precise amount, it was certainly very large; so large that it is the manifest duty of Congress to see that it does not occur again.

II.

In respect to the demoralization and inefficiency of a force selected upon the patronage plan, Mr. Porter himself now concedes the necessity of placing the Census Bureau in the classified service. For, in his article in the North American Review of December, 1897, he enumerates among the faults of the present system the following:

"Placing upon the shoulders of the Superintendent, whose mind should be fully occupied with his experts in planning the work, the responsibility of the appointment of an office force of several thousand clerks."

Mr. Porter suggests as a remedy:

"Making the Census a permanent office of the Government and applying to it precisely the same rules and regulations as to the employment of clerical help that are in vogue in the other Departments. If this were done," he says, "special Civil Service examinations might be held for the work prior to the time the clerk would be needed, and the Census Office would then have a sufficiently large eligible list to draw from. In 1890 I accepted Civil Service examinations of the higher grades, but that did not do away with the necessity of examining 2,700 clerks in the office, and this with the work of appointment, literally took up all the time of the Superintendent, whose mind should have been free for his purely statistical duties. . . . And then why transform the Census Office at its busiest season into an examination department for clerks, and the Director of a vast scientific investigation into a dispenser of political patronage. It is simply unjust to such an official. Having passed through the ordeal once, I am satisfied that the other way is more practical and in the end will be better for all concerned."

This declaration of Mr. Porter's experience is timely, if it will prevent the repetition of such a calamity.

Congressmen were advised systematically of the number of positions at their disposal. Mr. Porter kept regular books of account, charging each of the Congressmen with the number of appointments made at his request. Our Chairman has recently examined two of these books. In one of them, the appointments are classified according to States, and in another they are charged to the particular Congressman who solicited them. The latter book is a ledger of over four hundred pages. At the head of each page appears the name of the Congressman charged with the appointments. In the left hand column are the numbers of the files containing the recommendations and credentials. Then follow the names of the appointees, and then the grades and salaries. By means of this book the relative rights of members of Congress could be adjusted, and it could be seen at a glance whether any particular member had overdrawn his account. After a Congressman retired, the clerks appointed by him held their places by a precarious tenure, and frequently, perhaps generally, had to make way for persons appointed

and protected by the influence of his successor, or some other Congressman, for in this ledger, following the accounts kept with existing Congressmen (a page to each) is the list of the appointees of ex-Congressmen all thrown together, as though to be the subjects of early decapitation. We are informed that there are other books of the same character as this ledger, in the Census Office, covering other periods of time.

It would be hard to find a better illustration of the working of the patronage system than is presented by this book, where appointees are classified as in a live-stock register as the property of particular Congressmen, but without reference to their records and individual qualifications. We frankly and gladly recognize the fact that there are members of Congress who did not approve this debasing system, and who will not

now.

Patronage of this kind does not secure the political advantage which is supposed to be its object, for the most severe defeat ever sustained by the party then in power, occurred at the close of the very year that these appointments were parcelled out among the representatives of that party in Congress.

Mr. Porter testified that the appointees were, as a rule, recommended by Republicans. This rule, however, was not universal. There were Democrats who received a share of the appointments; perhaps where their votes in Congress were serviceable upon appropriation bills or otherwise. With this system of log-rolling in force it is not hard to understand how the enormous appropriations for taking the last census amounting to $10,620,000 were secured. Indeed, Mr. Porter stated some time since to our Chairman that if he had it to do again, he would select his clerks by Civil Service examinations, "even though the other plan had greatly smoothed the way to the passage of appropriations and other friendly legislation."

The plain English in regard to such transactions is that such legislation was bought with offices, and that the salaries of these offices were paid for out of the people's money. It was the people's money which paid for the keeping of the very books in which these transactions were recorded. Under such a system extravagance was a necessary result.

What was the character of the service under this patronage system? Shortly before Mr. Wright took charge of the Bureau a large number of discharges of those then holding positions