Vacancy on the Civil Service Commission Since the middle of March there has been a vacancy on the United States Civil Service Commission caused by the appointment by the President of Hon. John H. Bartlett as First Assistant Postmaster General. The President in filling this vacancy has an excellent opportunity to show his regard for the merit system. The League has urged him to appoint to the vacancy a man of independence and ability and one who will have that prestige and influence, not only with members of Congress, but also with other heads of departments, which is so desirable as a means of securing effective work by the Commission as a whole. In this connection it is important that the salaries now paid the members of the Commission be increased in accordance with the provisions of a bill which was recently reported in the House. If this bill is passed and signed by the President, the salary attached to a commissionership will be $7,500. Men of capacity and attainment are loath to make the necessary sacrifice in accepting appointment while the salary is only $5,000. Civil Service Throughout the Country The League announces with gratification the fact that it has been able to re-establish its field division and that it will undertake active work in various parts of the country to secure the adoption of new state civil service laws and civil service amendments to state constitutions. Among the states where the field seems to be readily adapted to special effort are Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kentucky, Indiana and Virginia. ECONOMY AND HONOR Annual Address of the President of the League, Are we concerned over a small matter? No. The public civilian service in our land is a vast one, far greater than is generally understood. In our Federal Civil Service alone there are five times as many individuals as there are in the military forces of the country, or in other words, 600,000. Add to this civilian army the employes of the states, counties, municipalities and townships, and we have all together half as many more as soldiers who went across the seas from our country in the great war; that is, the vast number of 3,000,000 of individuals. All together we have one public civilian employe to every seven families within the United States. The combined salaries of the National Civil Service are 600,000,000 of dollars a year, and of the total civil service within the borders of the United States, about 3,000,000,000 of dollars a year. For those who joined the colors in the last war, the greatest pains were taken in the selection of both soldiers and officers so that they should be thoroughly fit; and we did not stop there, but after being once selected we saw to it that they were kept fit, not only by vast government expenditures but by enormous sums of money and great individual effort voluntarily contributed. How is it with our great civilian army of employes? The tests of fitness for entrance into the public civilian army, so far as any are applied at all, apply almost wholly to the privates of the huge civilian army; but those higher up and in command of the lower grades are still appointed almost, though fortunately not quite wholly, by the politicians at their own arbitrary will. What chance would an army have to win battles whose officers were so selected, no matter how fit and brave the privates may be? These entrance tests as far as required are of great practical value. There are about 1,700 different kinds of positions at present in the civilian service, and there are 1,700 different kinds of tests adapted to the requirements of each kind of position, which the candidates for that kind have to pass. Far less than half of the places in this 3,000,000 civilian service are filled by these competitive tests; only ten out of the forty-eight states have adopted this system of filling their public offices. Based upon the conclusions of the recent report of a joint commission of Congress that sat for one year, there is enormous waste, amounting to one-quarter of the huge total of the salaries paid. There are many supernumeraries, many inefficient that ought to be discharged, much unnecessary duplication of work, no adequate management, and antiquated methods carried on that have long been abandoned in business. Could this one-quarter of waste be stopped everywhere in the public service, there would be a saving to our overtaxed country of seven hundred millions of dollars a year. Now, it is one of the planks of the new platform of our League that this waste should be eliminated, and we propose to do this by a combination of two methods. The first method is to turn efficiency and employment experts into the various departments of the public service to get rid of the inefficient, standardize work, modernize the department methods, put promotion on a basis of capacity instead of deadening seniority or sickening political pull, and raise the individual morale. By this method in the city of Chicago seven, eight and nine years ago, five millions of dollars a year were saved, and proportionate results have been achieved in the service of the Philippine Islands by the same way. A small beginning has been made along these lines in the departments within the District of Columbia, which you must understand represent only one-fiftieth of the entire civilian service within the borders of the United States, and even this small experiment fails of complete success from lack of sufficient legal authority and the vigorous support of Congress and public opinion, and at increased cost because not placed where it logically belongs, that is, under the civil service commission. The second method to be combined with the first is to require that the officers, that is, those holding high grade positions of command and responsible for the management of the lower grades, should be selected on account of fitness. How can this be done? The ordinary scholastic question and answer would be utterly useless where organizing ability is required. It is done either through promotion based on capacity, or through original appointment on a basis of inquiry into the past education, training, experience and achievements, just such an inquiry as the president of a great railroad would make for the heads of its various departments. This second method has been successfully tried for many high positions such as chief engineer of a municipal subway system, and of a municipal water supply, heads of scientific bureaus, of great public hospitals and libraries, and the like, in hundreds and hundreds of cases, commanding salaries as high as $10,000. As a practical illustration of the value of this, the County of Los Angeles began its enormous new water supply system under an engineer selected by political influence. So ineffcient did he prove and so wasteful that it was clear he would greatly exceed the appropriation of $500,000,000. He was discharged and his successor was selected under the civil service commission by this method, and completed the work well within the time and appropriation. Is it any wonder that Los Angeles appoints practically all its heads of departments through the civil service commission? With these examples of vast savings we appeal to our over-taxed countrymen. Then comes the question of morals. I know it is a custom, but is that custom right that permits a Congressman, for example, to waste his own time and the time of members of the cabinet in seeking patronage, and then to take about half the time of public offices, so appointed, but paid for by the public, to aid him in his political ambitions? It is almost one hundred years ago since Daniel Webster warned the country of the spoils system, saying: "It would effectually change the character of our government, that it tends to form a combination united by no common principles or opinions but seeking to maintain possession of the government by a vigorous exercise of its patronage that if not checked good men will grow tired of the exercise of political privileges. They will see that elections are but a mere selfish contest for office and they will abandon the government to the scramble of the bold, the daring and the desperate." Like warnings of the danger to our free institutions, but in varied words, have been given by Calhoun, Clay, Lincoln, Garfield and many others. a newer one. Someone may say those are old. Then let me give Five days ago, Chief Justice Thompson of the Supreme Court of Illinois, said to the Illinois State Bar Association: |