Report of the State Civil Service Commission, Volume 31, Part 1

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The Commission, 1914

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Page 37 - I absolutely split off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service Reform friends when they advocated written competitive examinations for promotion. In the Police Department I found these examinations a serious handicap in the way of getting the best men promoted, and never in any office did I find that the written competitive promotion examination did any good. The reason for a written competitive entrance examination is that it is impossible for the head of the office, or the candidate's prospective...
Page 37 - The civil service reform movement was one from above downward, and the men who took the lead in it were not men who as a rule possessed a very profound sympathy with or understanding of the ways of thought and life of their average fellow citizen.
Page 44 - Napanoch, Eastern New York Reformatory — George Deyo, FB Hoornbeck, De Veré E. Smith. Newark, State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women — Anna Warnecke, MD, Gertrude M. Palmer, Mrs. Vesta A. Gilmartin.
Page 38 - Their editors were refined men of cultivated tastes, whose pet temptations were backbiting, mean slander, and the snobbish worship of anything clothed in wealth and the outward appearances of conventional respectability. They were not robust or powerful men ; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, strong men ; often they had in them a vein of physical timidity. They avenged themselves to themselves for an uneasy subconsciousness of their own shortcomings by sitting in cloistered — or, rather,...
Page 15 - COMMISSION 17 ground that it did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. The demurrer was sustained at Special Term and appeal taken to the Appellate Division of the Third Department.
Page 14 - No provision in these rules, except those relating to certification of payrolls, shall be held to apply to any employee or appointee of a sheriff whose duty relates exclusively or in part to the functions of the sheriff's office in civil matters.
Page 36 - The important point, and the point most often forgotten by zealous Civil Service Reformers, was to remember that the routine competitive examination was merely a means to an end. It did not always produce ideal results. But it was normally better than a system of appointments for spoils purposes; it sometimes worked out very well indeed; and in most big governmental offices it not only gave satisfactory results, but was the only system under which good results could be obtained.
Page 22 - It is desirable that the classification of the civil service be based upon these principles. It is too well known that the forces that have for years contended for the purpose of regulating the classifications in the State service have been on the one side, the civil service reformers, who seek to get into the competitive class as many places as possible, and on the other, appointing officers who usually seek to keep out of the competitive class as many positions as possible. Neither of these forces...
Page 38 - ... contemptible than, although not so gross as, those they denounced and derided. Their editors were refined men of cultivated tastes, whose pet temptations were backbiting, mean slander, and the snobbish worship of anything clothed in wealth and the outward appearances of conventional respectability. They were not robust or powerful men ; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, strong men ; often they had in them a vein of physical timidity. They avenged themselves to themselves for an uneasy...
Page 42 - Messenger. Local Examiners and Institution Boards of Examiners LOCAL MEDICAL EXAMINEES Albany — JM Mosher, MD, 170 Washington avenue. Amsterdam — Arthur VH Smyth, MD Auburn — AF Hodgman, MD, 26 South street. Binghamton — Charles R. Seymour, MD, 115 Front street. Buffalo — William T. Getman, MD, 469 Franklin street.

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