and town meeting and governor, and everything else. One question I recollect we asked the candidate for the position was: 'Give a brief statement of the life of Abraham Lincoln.' Out of some hundreds of applicants we had ten who said he was the President of the Southern Confederacy. We had one man who said he was assassinated by Thomas Jefferson; two who said he was assassinated by Jefferson Davis; another who said he was assassinated by Garfield; three who said he was assassinated by Guiteau; and one man, who evidently did not feel friendly to the Salvation Army, said he was assassinated by Ballington Booth.

"We asked who was the chief officer of the United States. One of the candidates responded 'Parkhurst;' another, probably of different political faith, said 'Croker;' two with deft flattery, named me.

"One of the questions was to name certain of the States that were in the Confederacy in 1861. Nearly half of the applicants names States like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. It was at the time of the silver campaign, and they had a vague impression that there was something wrong out there, but they did not know what.

"We also asked them-I dislike to state this answer before Senator Lodge, but I must to name five of the New England States. There were three answers to that question which I specially liked. One man named New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The next two answers I am going to give are so extraordinary that I kept the record; I kept the questions and answers. The five New England States, one man said, were England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Cork. The gentleman was of foreign origin, I may explain. Another man, presumably of different religious faith, named

Belfast instead of Cork."

Asked whether these gentlemen whose answers the Assistant Secretary gave had been appointed, the answer was "Yes," and specified "One man was appointed who thought Abraham Lincoln was President of the Southern Confederacy, and another man who said he was a great General, and fought the battle of Bunker Hill." The Assistant Secretary explained that both of these men were of foreign birth, and except as to Abraham Lincoln, passed excellent examinations, and a failure of one question did not bar a man out.

"I have received a little clipping from a San Antonio paper that goes to my heart on the question of practical examinations. Always, when you start to make a rather revolutionary change, you meet opposition from very excellent people who are of a conservative habit of thought. Two or three years ago I enlisted Mr. Proctor, whose views and mine were always identical on all these matters, and we invariably worked together in every respect, in a scheme for the examination of customs inspectors on the Texas border. I

know all about the cow country. Therefore I am fit to deal with it. I knew I could get up a bully set of competitive tests for customs inspectors on the border, because it happens to lend itself to a good system of competitive tests. You want to have a man who is a first-rate horseman, who knows about brands, who is a good shot, and is able to write a clear report. First of all, you have to get recommendations of character, of course. Then I wanted to have enough of a written examination to test the candidate's handwriting, his arithmetic, and his capacity to write a good letter, and then to test his revolver shooting, exactly as they do on any range. On a range, as you know, Senators, the results of the competition are put down numerically. Such and such a man gets 87 out of a possible hundred, another 67, another 93, the bull's-eye being marked 5, the next line 4, the next line 3, the next 2, and the outer line 1. That lent itself very readily to competitive tests.

"Then for the brand reading you have to trust a little bit to good fortune, but in order to show knowledge of horsemanship and cattle, it was only necessary to have what is a favorite test of cow punchers on the round-up. Let each man take any horse he wishes-and if a man has not a good horse he will get one,-turn loose a steer for each man, and test him according to the rapidity with which he can overtake, rope, throw, and tie down the steer. It was not deemed practicable at that moment to put that competitive test in, especially as I could not get down there to oversee it myself. But it was adopted to a certain extent, and I this morning received in the mail a slip from a San Antonio paper as follows:

"For mounted inspector-He who gets the job must read brands, ride bronchos, and shoot with both hands.

""The Civil Service Commission announces that, on March 15, an examination will be held in Brownsville, Texas, for the position of mounted inspector in the customs district of Brazos de Santiago, with headquarters at Brownsville. The examination will be of a light educational character, but applicants will be required to file special vouchers showing their knowledge of the Mexican language and of the country embraced in the district, as well as their ability to read brands and their experience in horsemanship and marksmanship.""

It was suggested that in December, 1896, fifteen steel examiners in the Navy Department were appointed without examination, and the Assistant Secretary was asked whether he knew anything about that. He said there was a very rigid Civil Service examination held for those fifteen steel inspectors under the best men there were in the Department,—this was just after the extension of the classified service,-just as was done in the railway mail service when the small free delivery postoffices were classified. The Assistant Secretary observed that it was not possible when 30,000 men were put in for the

Commission of Civil Service to undertake their examination. The local people would have to be trusted to conduct examinations until the examination machinery was well under way.

The

Up to that time the temporary examinations would be a makeshift. extension referred to in Washington the year before, was not too large, and if the President did consult him, as was very unlikely, he would advise just then that the Deputy Internal Revenue Collectors be not classified. That might ultimately be done, but it was a scattered service. When he recommended the classification originally, he thought there would be but one classification made at a time, and that the Commission could turn all its energies to dealing with 2,000 places, not thinking that the whole would be classified as a part of a tremendous and sweeping transaction; but in a scattered service, it would take a good long time to develop thoroughly satisfactory machinery for such an extension. He did not think the Commission, as to the fifteen steel inspectors, "could have handled the matter at the time, unless it had been composed exclusively of Angel Gabriels with a double-jointed capacity for doing ten times as much as an ordinary mortal. Mr. Proctor, Commissioner, asked the Assistant Secretary whether he did not believe, that if a promotion examination such as he had instituted in the Navy Department and navy yards, were carried forward by all the Departments, it would automatically do away with any dread of life tenure. The answer of the Assistant Secretary was, "It would automatically do away with much of the dread of life tenure." Any form like that does not accomplish everything. It accomplished a great deal. The examination for promotion to which Mr. Proctor referred, was not a written examination, but one where the man's record stood as a competitive test.

In closing his testimony, Assistant Secretary Roosevelt said of Mr. John R. Proctor, "He is the only member of the Commission with whom I served. He and I radically differ on politics; but there were no points of policy or practice in which we did not work hand in hand absolutely, and I happened to see Mr. Proctor put to pretty severe tests in standing up for Republicans who were menaced; take it in the Treasury, under Mr. Carlisle; for colored Republican letter-carriers menaced in Southern offices by Southern white Democratic postmasters, who belong to his own party, and he rang more than true on every occasion."

In the course of the testimony given by Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, there was some difference of opinion in relation to the examination of fifteen steel inspectors, and their appointment, and the Secretary desired to make inquiry before stating the case fully, and mentioned that he would write a letter on the subject which is as follows:

"Washington, Feb. 3, 1898. "My Dear Sir: In accordance with your request, I have to inform you as follows about the steel inspectors:

"The examination was held over a year ago; that is, in January, 1897. It appears that some trouble occurred in connection with the inspection of the steel plates submitted by the armor companies to the Government, and the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Herbert, came to the conclusion, that in the interests of the Government, it was desirable to have a special corps of civilian experts appointed only with reference to their peculiar capacity for the very technical work needed. It was necessary to take immediate action. In such a case the examination invariably has to be conducted by experts outside of the Civil Service Commission's regular force. In this instance the Commission, of course, had no register of eligibles and no means of getting any. It was a few months after the great extension of the classified service, which put in 30,000 places extra; and it was a simple physical impossibility for the Commission, already swamped with work, to take charge of the highly technical examinations of this nature, at least until its ordinary and regular work was in shape. A special examination for a very small class of applicants, as in this case, of course entails as much work as (and if the examination is highly technical very much more work than) is the case with a simple examination for a very large class of candidates of a kind which the Commission has to itself undertake. It was impossible to wait, and Secretary Herbert and the Commission took the only proper course, a course which, in my opinion, can be objected to only on the narrowest red-tape grounds.

"The Secretary, as appears by his letter of January 29, 1897, got permission from the Commission, through Chief Clerk Peters, to have a special examination held by an officer of the Navy who was an expert in the manufacture of steel, Assistant Naval Constructor R. B. Dashiell. The holding of the examination was thoroughly advertised. About 150 applications were sent in. According to the report of Mr. Dashiell, the examination was very thorough, covering the entire ground of the inspection of steel and iron, developing every candidate's abilities to conduct the physical and chemical inspections required, the constructor also giving weight to the testimonials and general fitness of the candidates. Fifteen men were appointed in consequence of this examination, who have given entire satisfaction.

"Men appointed to this position have to perform such peculiar duties that I question whether an ordinary Civil Service examination would be adequate to test them. Certainly, if they were appointed as the result of written competitive examination, it could only be in accordance with one conducted on the same lines as that conducted by Mr. Dashiell. In this particular case, for

- the Civil Service Commission and the Navy Department to have followed any other course than the one they did would not only have been absurd, but would have been highly detrimental to the public interest.

"I am, with great respect, yours truly,

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
"Assistant Secretary."

"Hon. J. C. Pritchard, United States Senate,"