aware of glaring de'ects in any of his institutions to try and find the remedy and call attention in no unmistakable terms to both the ill and the cure, that in the end everything in his country may be of the best.

It is plain we cannot let a complicated piece of machinery made for one purpose be used also for wholly different and inconsistent purposes and get good results. We cannot expect the immense postal department with its one hundred to two hundred thousand employees be made a dumping ground of political henchmen and to have its officials changed from top to bottom just as they are beginning to learn the rudiments of this very complicated business and at the same time get the good results of business-like appointments and tenure of office. You cannot expect your children can play go-cart in the mud with your gold chronometer watch and have it keep perfect time.

There is, however, a marked unwillingness to face the plain facts and admit the deficiencies and the want of organization and business methods in our postal system. In short, both good natured Uncle Sam and the boys who have been playing all the spring deny that the vegetables are any less fourishing than in other gardens, notwithstanding their capers, but add, with beautiful consistency, that the reason for the deficiencies, which they say don't exist, are the atmosphere, or the distance of the sun. No, Oh dear me, no! It is not the dragging the watch in the mud that made it stop.

But for all this we are by no means in a hopeless condition. As was pointed out last year, the very fact that we have as good service as we have under such demoralization of all business methods is conclusive proof of the natural adaptibility to circumstances and the business instincts of the average individuals who from time to time have had a short try at some part of the job. An eminent postal authority from Germany expressed himself as very much struck with the alertness and diligence of the employees in one of our larger post offices then under civil service rules and headed by a postmaster believing in the reform.

Experience in the railway mail service continues to illustrate what can be done for the benefit of the postal service by abolishing the spoils system and introducing civil service reform methods. As I showed last year, the best record ever

reached in the railway mail service under the spoils system was at the end of President Arthur's administration, when for a longer time than usual very few partisan changes had been made. The employees though then appointed as party spoils were each submitted to a thorough "case" test, a sort of half examination pending probationary employment. The record showed the number of correct distributions to one error had reached the high number of 5575. On the incoming of the first Cleveland administration there were many changes for political reasons and the record fell to 3364. After the looting of this part of the service in the first few months of the Harrison Administration with absolutely unprecedented rapidity of removals, the record fell to 2834 and, after that, under six years of civil service reform, had risen to the remarkable record of 8894 a year ago last June. During the last year the improvement has continued and as more and more of the present employees have been brought in under civil service reform examinations and are continued in the department during good service, the record of correct distributions has come up to the still more remarkable figure of nearly ten thousand to one error. It is said to be the best service of its kind in the world. In the general postal service, too, the adoption of civil service principles in so many of the post offices has had the effect of diminishing the number of letters sent to the dead letter office, notwithstanding an actual increase of mail matter during the same time.

Possibly, if our shortcomings arose from incurable national deficiencies, our duty might lie in concealment, but when we know that the cause is curable and that while it lasts it is also demoralizing and corrupting to our politics, our duty is plainly disclosure.

At our meeting a year ago we were greatly encouraged by the new plan of consolidating the fourth-class post offices with larger central ones, by the order bringing the smaller offices thus annexed, with their former postmasters, into the classified civil service, and also by the promise of very considerable extensions of the civil service law soon to be made. These extensions have since been carried out, so that the post office department at Washington is practically on a basis of merit appointment and tenure of office. We shall, therefore, soon have a trained body of officials at the centre of the de

partment with a better understanding of the needs of the service and consequently a gradual improvement. In fact as far as the postal department at Washington goes, and also the post offices where the reform is applied, the reform has been carried about as far as it can be, with the exception of the postmasters themselves and perhaps some 570 assistant postmasters who are excepted.

The plan of consolidating smaller post offices was, however, effectually blocked in the United States Senate last spring by amendments to the Post office appropriation bill so that no post office can be consolidated if it is over five miles from the boundary of the city or town having the principal office, and not even then if the town of the subordinate office happens to be either a county seat (with the exception of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Towson, Maryland) or is of less than 1500 inhabitants. Even the small amount of consolidation that might still have taken place under these amendments was prevented by the refusal of Congress to allow salaries to be paid postmasters after they had become heads of branches, although it has been proved that such consolidation actually saves money. That this consolidation and reform of post offices, much needed also for the better organization of the department into districts, should have been blocked mainly by the efforts of Senator Gorman, of Maryland, the spoilsman who has notoriously put incompetents and criminals into the government employ, was most fitting. It is still possible to remove these obstacles to consolidation with the next post office appropriation bill, but it would then be too late to do much in this way of reform before the incoming of the next administration, so that Mr. McKinley will have to meet the full pressure for these numerous offices without the aid of any established system of appointment on merit.

What would be the consequence of the change of administration on the service already classified, it is impossible to doubt. Mr. McKinley's attitude is, too, well known. His able defence of civil service reform in Congress in 1890, the platform on which he was elected and his explicit letter of acceptance make it clear that he will uphold the system already established and will make any required extensions along the usual lines. To think differently would be putting Mr. McKinley among the most insincere of the "catch-vote" poli

ticians. But how about the postmasters? As I have said, they are not classified under the civil service rules and they can only be brought under its principles by the adoption of some new and unusual method. There are now 70,238 postmasters, according to the report for June 30, 1896. Of these, 3,635 are presidential and 66,303 are fourth-class. They man the military outposts, they are the pretorian guards of the boss system in every city, town and village of the United States. They are the chief resources in the Federal service now left for the mere wire pulling politicians. Their salaries, with those of the consuls and a few other officials, form the only remaining national bribery fund for private use, at public expense, for controlling primaries, caucuses and conventions. Theirs are the only large number of positions which congressmen and defeated candidates for Congress of the dominant party can continue to sell for cash payments, by way of commissions on the salaries secured. Consequently the crowding for these places promises to be very great. The scramble has already begun. According to press interviews, many a Congressman is planning how to divide this patronage carcass within his district. Shall we be subjected to another disgraceful scene with this incoming administration or has the time and the man come to put an end to it all? Mr. McKinley has certainly shown enough interest in and comprehension of the reform to wish to put a stop to this remainder of the vicious system. He has been enough in Washington to see the danger of yielding a little. He must be aware that if he should yield one office to one congressman, he would have to yield another to another, and so on, yielding one after another, he would fall with increasing rapidity into the old spoils method. The times, however, have come to Mr. McKinley's aid. Every other election has been distinctly a party victory. It has been hard for the President to resist party claims, but this time it was not a party victory but a national one. Under the condition of this year's vote the sound money democrats alone insured Mr. McKinley's election, and if I do not misunderstand the sound money democrats, they are not asking for a division of the patronage. Then why is this not the time and why is not Mr. McKinley the man to take the firm stand and to say "No" to every partisan demand for a postmastership? if he should do this, Mr. McKinley will be

added to the list of those Presidents who have done so much to advance the cause of civil service reform. Nay, more, he will go down to history as the one President who has completed the reform and the only one who has in no respect yielded to the spoils system since the days of Washington and Adams, and who has at last put American politics on a higher level, where purity and honor will have a fair chance to win. Is this too much to hope? I trust not. Before our next annual meeting, one way or the other, it will be writ in History.