creased appropriations for the Commission, and with great relief and advantage in the Departments and offices declared by those who preside over them, the old system of Congressional influence and official favor for securing appointments may be arrested if not destroyed.

3. That a system of open, free, public examinations, under a nonpartisan Commission, may be successfully conducted for testing the character and capacity needed in the public service, without extending the examination, except for a small number of special places, beyond the subjects which are deemed so essential to success in private business, and for the discharge of the common duties of citizens, that they are required to be taught at the public expense in the common schools throughout the country.

4. That a merit system of office, of which such examinations are the most important part, even under all the disadvantages attending its first introduction, has proved itself capable of supplying for the public work officers at least as worthy and capable as those secured under any other system, without introducing any evils peculiar to itself.

5. That the new system is rapidly suppressing the old practice under which members of Congress were almost compelled by their constituents to become hunters and agents for places and promotions in the Departments, whereby a steady encroachment was being made by the legislative upon the executive department, if, indeed, the practice was not equally destructive of the independence of both. But it should be mentioned that patronage and favor on the part of the Executive also are being in equal measure suppressed.

"Under the merit system the consent of no executive officer is needed to give access to the examinations. The mere opportunity of selecting one from four amounts to nothing in the way of patronage. It may fairly be said, therefore, that those thus entering the public service have put themselves into office. The places they fill are not only taken out of the patronage of the party in power, but they are taken out of patronage absolutely. They are made the prizes which merit earns for itself."

Had it not been for the rules, every vacancy in the nearly 14,500 places to which the examinations now extend might have been filled by selections to suit the pleasure or interest of the executive officers of the Government. The 438 appointments made during the past year in the departmental service could have been treated as so much patronage for strengthening the influence of the Executive against Congress. Twice or ten times that number of places, but for the civil service act and rules, might have been secured through removals for the sake of making patronage to be dispensed by the Departments, postmasters, and customs officers, for carrying elections, without any dangerous disregard of a definite policy to which the country was committed. All of those 14,500 classified places, but for that act and what has been done under it, might in the late elections have been promised by both parties alike as the spoils of the victors.

But this is not all. The selection of perhaps one-half of the persons brought into the service during the year was from the party not in the control of the Administration, and was, therefore, not only a surrender of Executive patronage, but of party patronage as well, in the common interests of character, capacity, and justice. On the theory of the spoils system this has been a great sacrifice and loss on the part of the party in power. According to a better theory, however, it was no loss, but a plain and patriotic duty, yet none the less magnanimous and unprecedented, in the administration of the country.

To maintain the new system, now in good working order, it is plain that the same high sense of duty, the same surrender of all mere partisan considerations, and the same fidelity to justice and sound principles must continue to prevail.

PARTISANSHIP IN OFFICE.

There is reason to think that the selection for appointment of those who excel in the examinations, rather than of those who have excelled in partisan zeal and persistent pushing for places, has done something to arrest the proscriptive party spirit which has existed in some at least of the Departments and great offices. When adherents of both parties can secure appointments on merit alone, those vicious associations of public officials under a party test of membership which have for their main object to coerce assessments and work for the party controlling the Administration cannot long survive. They may perhaps give place to other associations devoted to those more appropriate and useful purposes which call for no divisions on political grounds and recognize the true principles of public administration.

The right of such officials to vote and freely express their opinions no one will question; but, in the degree that they become proscriptive partisans, they forget the proprieties of their position and are likely to become poor public servants.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE MERIT SYSTEM.

The effective support which the new system is bringing to the cause of popular education should not be overlooked. In no way can a nation do more to advance the dignity and success of the public schools of the people than by making excellence in the good character they develop, and in the studies they teach, as far as possible, the tests for the holding of its official places of honor and profit. The youth of the country will be quick to see that good character which cannot be impeached, an excellence in their studies, which gives a high place on the register for appointment, and not vicious activity in party factions or unmanly subserviency to a great officer or politician are most effective for securing appointments. It is not inappropriate to repro

1

duce here this note, which appeared in the first report of the Commission.

Thoughtful men are noticing the tendency of the new system to aid and honor the public shools. Governor Cleveland, of New York, for example, after stating in his last message "that New York leads the States in the inauguration of a comprehensive system of civil service," declares that "the children of our citizens are educated and trained in schools maintained at the common expense, and the people as a whole have a right to demand the selection for the public service of those whose natural aptitudes have been improved by the educational facilities furnished by the State."

It appears from statistics presented here with that 70 per cent. of all those who have entered the service through competitive examinations were educated in the common schools alone. But the service has not been filled by boys and girls direct from these schools. The average age of all those appointed under the new system has been nearly 30 years. If we assume the average age of leaving the common schools to be sixteen years, it appears that, taking all those appointed, there has been an average period of 14 years of practical life between the schools and the public service.

"It should always be a paramount object to keep the public service freely open to as many of the people as have the ability and information needed for doing its work. The best informed and most meritorious of those who enter it will be likely to win the higher prizes through promotion."*

*The effect of the introduction of the merit system into the British civil service
was in the highest degree favorable, both to popular education and to liberal princi-
ples. Indeed, the movement for establishing that system in Great Britain was largely
a contest between those, on one side, who stood for the old aristocratic patronage-
monopoly of appointments enjoyed for centuries by the rich and the high-born, and
those, on the other side, who stood for the just claims of character and capacity in
humble life. After speaking of the advantages of that system in other respects, Sir
Charles Trevelyan, than whom no one is better informed on the subject, in a letter to
one of the members of this Commission, says: "The same change which has increased
the efficiency of the civil and military services has given a marvelous stimulus to edu-
cation. Formerly, boys intended for any branch of the public service had no motive
to exert themselves, because, however idle they might be, they were certain to get an
appointment. Now, from their earliest years, boys know that their future depends
upon themselves, and a new spirit of activity has supervened.
All this has

led to a great improvement in the efficiency of the administrative service."
The aristocratic classes, with many honorable exceptions, opposed the introduction
of that system on the same ground that they opposed popular education at the public
expense; that is, that both would weaken their means of influencing the Government,
at the same time that they would give greater opportunities and influence to the sons
and daughters of the common people.

In a volume of official papers, issued by the British Government in 1856, when the
subject of introducing examinations was first under consideration, it is declared that
"the encouragement given to education would no doubt be great, but it will all be
in favor of the lower classes of society, and not of the higher.
Appoint-
ments now conferred on young men of aristocratic connection will fall into the hands
of a much lower grade in society.
Such a measure will exercise the hap-

*

*

*

*

*

*

piest influence on the education of the lower classes throughout England, acting by the surest of all motives-the desire a man has for bettering himself in life." The

But there are yet many persons who hold that servile work for a party and bigoted intolerance of political opponents are better qualifications for a clerkship than the highest excellence in the knowledge the teaching of which costs the people many millions of dollars every year. Such persons rejoice in the promise of their own children, if in the schools they excel according to the school-master's test; but the moment as men or women they seek an office where such knowledge is essential, the school-master's test is counted as ridiculous, and the test of the politician and patronage-monger is that alone under which a republic can prosper.

BUREAUCRACY AND MONOPOLY.

The Commission, under this head, repeats its language of last year: "The means by which, as we have seen, competitive examinations are surely breaking up the class monopoly of patronage, are equally certain to prevent the growth of class monopoly or bureaucracy in the future. Under free competition no officer can award places to his favorites; no party can either make its platform a test for office-holding or exclude from the service the adherents of the other party.

"The political opinions, the social standing, the occupations, the sympathies and theories of those who enter the classified service will be as varied as the character, the pursuits, and the feelings of that vast citizenship from which applicants now spontaneously seek the examinations and win their way to the offices. Once in office, they will be free, by reason of the manner in which it was secured, to discharge those political duties and co-operate in manly and honest ways within their party, as becomes every citizen of a republic."

It is a curious fact that those who suffer most from fears that competitive examinations will create a bureaucracy or a monopoly of officeholding on the part of a particular class appear to be the very persons

volume shows that the examinations were opposed by the privileged classes because they foresaw that such would be the effects.

No opinion can be more unfounded or repugnant to the truth of history, than that which regards examinations, and especially competitive examinations, in an aristocratic country or any other, as favorable to aristocratic interests. For these examinations and the movement for popular education based on general taxation in Great Britain, went on together; and by the exertion of common friends both gained their greatest victory at the same session of Parliament, in 1870. No triumph of democratic or republican principles in that country has been greater than that achieved by the establishment of these examinations, which have largely contributed to that growing liberal policy which has been so prominent in her history during the last decade. Now the son of a bishop or of a duke, if he would gain a place in her executive service, must compete side by side with the sons, perhaps, of chimney-sweeps, educated at the public expense, who are just as free to seek an examination for the same branch of the service. These examinations are, therefore, thoroughly democratic and republican in spirit, and nothing so forcibly illustrates the prejudice and lack of information concerning them in this country as the fact that the opposite view should have been accepted by candid or intelligent persons.

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who would, in selecting for appointment, exclude (1) all but members of their own party; (2) all of their own party who do not belong to their own faction; (3) all of their own faction who will not vote for their own candidate or for themselves, and (4) all who will not pay political assessments and work servilely to keep the party in power and its favorites in place. It is worthy of consideration whether that is not the only way possible of creating a bureaucratic monopoly of office-holders in a republic.

THE PUBLIC ESTIMATION OF OFFICIAL LIFE.

There are not wanting indications that the merit system will raise the public service in the estimation of the people. Every person seeking to enter it must, in the application paper, state under oath, and separately for each year, his or her occupation, position, and residence during the past five years, a statement not likely to be made by persons whose course of life will not bear the light. There is reason to believe that a considerable number of place-hunters do not go further than the blank for this statement in the application.

The mere fact that a person has entered the classified service under the rules is in itself evidence of a character which is well supported, of a self-reliance which has won its way unaided, and of attainments and capacity which have gained a high grading against all competitors. It seems certain that public servants who have stood such tests and won their places by such means must be highly esteemed by the people.

SOLICITATION FOR OFFICE.

The statements cited from the reports of nearly every customs officer and postmaster at the offices where the examinations have been held, to the effect that they have experienced a great relief from solicitation for places the postmaster at Cincinnati, for example, saying that he used, sometimes, to have as many as twenty applications per day, but now has not more than five in a month, might be supplemented by statements hardly less strong on the part of heads of Departments. It is believed that the relief of the same kind experienced by members of both houses of Congress has also been very great. The late President Garfield declared that nearly one-third of his time, when a member of Congress, was taken up by those seeking places, and a gentleman, recently Secretary of the Treasury, has declared that more than onethird of his office hours was given to the same class of persons.

The annoyance and loss of time on the part of officials, however severely felt by themselves, is the smallest part of the evils caused by these ceaseless solicitations. Tens of thousands of private citizens have had some participation in them. These solicitations were generally connected with demoralizing intrigues and vicious bargains and combinations of influence to persuade and coerce the appointing power.