Criminal Offences Among Federal Civil Servants in Maryland Under the Spoils and Under the Merit Systems.

BY JOHN C. ROSE.

It is of interest to inquire what effect the merit system has had upon the general morality of those parts of the public service to which it has been applied. There is no way of accurately testing the average comparative morality of different bodies of men. The subject, however, is important enough to make it worth while to collect and preserve available data upon it. I shall, therefore, lay before you very briefly, the results of an examination of the records of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland for the last twenty-eight years. I do not undertake to assert that the figures I am about to give, in themselves prove very much. They are as a rule too small to make generalizations from them safe or valuable. Such as they are, however, they may be worth the few minutes' time I shall ask you to give to them. In the twentyeight years from 1870 to the present time, fifty eight persons in Federal employ have been indicted in the United States Courts for this District. Of these, twenty eight were indicted in the thirteen years between 1870 and 1883, that is before the passage of the Pendleton act, and the remaining thirty in the fifteen years since it became a law. The average number of Federal employees in this State during the second period must have been very much greater than during the first, so that relatively there has been a large decrease in the number of government officers and employees against whom criminal proceedings have been instituted. In each period, the proportion of convictions to indictments has been about the same. In the earlier, nineteen were convicted or pleaded guilty, and in nine cases the prosecutions in one way or another, termin

ated in favor of the accused. During the latter period, twenty were found guilty upon their plea or by verdict; in nine cases the prosecution failed, and one is now in cusody awaiting trial. Of the thirty who have been indicted since the Civil Service Act went into effect, six were appointed as the result of successful competition, and twenty-four were not. Of these six, three have been convicted, two acquitted, and the case against one is now pending. Since 1883 the number of persons appointed as a result of their success in the examinations has been at least twelve hundred, so that the number indicted has been not more than one in two hundred, and those convicted not more than one in four hundred of the total number appointed. It is not possible, at least, without an amount of work utterly disproportioned to the value of the result to be attained, to ascertain accurately the number of persons appointed during these fifteen years to places outside the classified service. If common laborers be excluded, and they should be, because their official position gives them as a rule no special opportunities to commit offences against the Federal laws, the number of non-classified places must be less than four times the number of the classified. Consequently, prosecutions have been not only absolutely but relatively more frequent outside than in the classified service.

A study of the figures with reference to the different branches of the service tends to confirm this view. The Railway Mail Service was classified in May, 1889. In the nine and a half years since, one of its employees in Maryland has been indicted and he was acquitted.

In the preceding nineteen years, four were indicted, three of whom were convicted. In the fifteen years since the Custom House force here was classified, there has not been a single indictment found against any of its employees. In the preceding thirteen years there were two; both resulting in convictions. In the Post Office at Baltimore, there were in the thirteen years preceding the adoption of the law, eight indictments. Since the law has been in force the average number of employees has been nearly or quite doubled. The number of indictments during that period has been fourteen. Of these fourteen, however, nine were appointed otherwise than as the result of competitive examinations and only five were chosen by such examinations. Of these five, three have

been convicted, one acquited, and one is now awaiting his trial. The proportion of classified places to non-classified was in 1897 as five hundred and fifty to one hundred and twenty-five. A similar proportion has been pretty steadily maintained since 1885; the extension of the classification within the Post Office itself being offset by the increase in the number of clerks in charge of postal sub-stations. Such clerks are usually druggists or other storekeepers, who receive a trifling salary, and are necessarily appointed without competition. Some of the indictments have been against persons who were in the federal service at the time the post office was classified, and who although then included in the classified service did not themselves obtain their positions by competi tive examinations. The tenure of office of the last class of employees under the Civil Service Act, was, however, short. Postmasters Veazey and Brown dismissed practically all of them. Making proper allowance for the time during which they remained in the service, it is still true, that taking the whole period of fifteen years since 1883, into consideration, two-thirds of the entire force in the Baltimore Post Office has on the average been composed of men appointed in accordance with the methods of the merit system. It follows that there have been nearly twice as many prosecutions among the third of the force otherwise appointed as there have been in the two-thirds of the force so appointed. There is one allowance, however, that should be made in this connection. It should be borne in mind that the temptations in some of the excepted or non-classified places are much more insidious if not greater than is the case in most of the competitive places. The latter positions, as a rule, are those of clerks or carrier. Speaking generally, the only way in which people holding such positions have any special opportunity to steal either from the government or the public, is by rifling letters. There never can be any doubt in the mind of any man who takes and opens a letter, as to the character of his act. Many of the excepted or non-classified places on the other hand, are those of clerks in charge of sub-stations, doing a money order business. In spite of rigid regulations, it is probable that most of those who go wrong, begin by first making use of the government money for what they believe will be a temporary purpose, and they accordingly are able at first to persuade themselves that

they are not doing anything very bad. In such places no matter how the incumbents are selected, there will always be a greater number of men who will get into trouble than will be the case where the first step in the downward path is absolutely unequivocal in its character.

At the present time the clerks in charge of these sub-stations are usually chosen neither by the merit or by the spoils system. There are as a rule tradesmen, who, at their own instance, at the request of their neighbors, or in some cases at the instance of the Post Office authorities, undertake for a trifling compensation to furnish the persons residing in their vicinity with the facilities of a postal sub-station.

In the five months in which I have been in office, three employees of the Baltimore Post Office have been indicted. Two of them were druggists in charge of these postal sub-stations appointed by the Postmasters without examination, and both were purely non-political appointments.

After making all proper allowance for the differing condition of employment and for the uncertainty as to the exact number of persons appointed to unclassified places, it remains true that in every department and branch of the service considered, the figures show, or at all events tend to show, that fewer appointees under the merit system have proven criminally false to their trust than was or is the case under the spoils system.

There is one large body of public servants as to whom the comparison can be made with what for practical purposes may be considered absolute precision. All letter carriers attached to the Baltimore Post Office appointed since July 1, 1883, have been chosen by competitive examination. Before that time none were so selected. On July 1st, 1870, the Baltimore Post Office had thirty-five carriers; on July 1, 1883, it had one hundred and five carriers. The average for the thirteen years may be taken with reasonable accuracy as seventy. The number of regular carriers is now three hundred and eight, so that the average number for the last fifteen and a half years during which the force has been classified, has been two hundred and six, or very nearly three times as many as during the preceding thirteen years.

Since 1870 eight carriers have been indicted and all of them have been convicted or have pleaded guilty. Of these

eight, three were appointed as a result of their standing in open competitive examinations. Five were chosen for other reasons. The answer to a little problem in what at school used to be called the double rule of three, shows that the prosecutions against carriers appointed under the spoils system were relatively more than five times as numerous as they have been against those appointed under the merit system. It is true as the opponents of civil service reform never weary of asserting, that moral worth cannot be tested by mental or physical examinations. But it is quite as true, however, that if a scoundrel when he takes a competitive examination is under no disadvantage by reason of his scoundrelism, he does not, on the other hand, find it of any advantage either. Can as much always be said when the competition is conducted in accordance with the accepted rules of the spoilsmen ?