should proceed without further delay to secure the inclusion of a new clause which will not arouse this antagonism. In Illinois, too, an attempt to secure a civil service clause in the state constitution met with failure in the late constitutional convention.

The League's Program

Various estimates have been made as to the amount of money spent in public funds on the annual payroll of public civilian employees. An average seems to be, as the League stated a year ago in its resolutions, at least three billions of dollars. It seems certain that hundreds of millions of this large sum is wasted because of the inefficiency in the methods of handling government business and the wastage through supernumerary employees made possible almost entirely by the operation of the spoils system. We urge again the passage of state civil service laws in all the thirty-eight states which now have none and the further development of existing laws. Existing civil service examining methods should be improved so as to provide still better tests of the practical ability of each candidate to perform the duties of the position to which he is seeking appointment.

These measures are essential to the successful and economical administration of democratic government. Political leaders should be brought to realize that patronage is not an asset but a liability to the party in power.

THE NEW BATTLE AGAINST SPOILS

Annual Address of the President

William Dudley Foulke

Evening Session, December 6, 1923

No man can intelligently take part in the work of the National Civil Service Reform League and not feel something of the inspiration of its history. It has struggled now for more than forty years for the elimination of political spoils just as the American Anti-Slavery Society struggled in its generation for the extirpation of human bondage. And as that society spoke to the world with tongue and pen, in eloquence thrilling and irresistible, through the lips of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, through the stirring poems of Whittier and the great novel of Harriet Beecher Stowe, so the cause of merit against spoils has been set forth in the convincing literature and the magical eloquence of George William Curtis, our Chrysostom; in the logic of that master of argument, Carl Schurz; in the learning of Daniel C. Gilman, the raillery of Joseph H. Choate, the sound philosophy and practical wisdom of Charles W. Eliot, and the lifelong devotion and thorough knowledge of every need of our reform of our last president, Richard H. Dana.

We have had not only eloquence and literature at our disposal, but constructive statesmanship; that of Dorman B. Eaton, who devised, and George W. Pendleton, who brought to accomplishment the civil service act of 1883, an act so well adapted to the needs of the service and containing within itself such seeds of growth for future requirements and it has needed no alteration during all these years.

And beyond all this, we have had, as the sharer of our counsels, that greatest of all protagonists of the merit system, Theodore Roosevelt, and as president of our Cincinnati organization, the man who gave to the

classified service its widest percentage of extension, our present Chief Justice, William Howard Taft.

We have indeed one advantage over the Anti-Slavery Society of the past. We do not ask nor need to change the Constitution of our fathers; all we seek can be accomplished under the aegis of the Republic as it stands. We have no criticism on the fabric of our government.

It is not then in the language of mere conventional courtesy that I say to you that I am deeply sensible of your call to the presidency and proud of the honor of succeeding the leaders who have filled this place. The infirmities of declining years admonish me that I can hold for a very little time the trust committed to my hands, yet during the period I shall strive to fulfill the duties of my office with all diligence and zeal, and however unworthy to hold such a standard, I do not intend to be Romulus Augustulus, the last of the line, to deliver the precious inheritance into the hands of the barbarian spoilers. It will be transmitted to those who will conduct the League to the successful accomplishment of its patriotic purposes.

There is a great deal to be done; our work is hardly half completed, but the surroundings are greatly changed. In our earlier years we had to combat a very widespread disapproval. We were "theorists," "doctrinnaires," "pharisees," "snivel service reformers," met on every side by the aspersions of the "manly" advocates of political plunder. At every step the strains to which we marched were the howls and execrations of our enemies. But that was inspiring. Today our dangers are different. It is apathy, not opposition, that we encounter. Men say we have already accomplished what we set out to do. The bulk of the federal employees are now classified.

We are so well

grounded in public opinion that there is no danger of a return to spoils. The merit system is entirely safe.

So talked the "practical" men who, a year ago, were striving by most "reasonable" and "moderate" encroachments to undermine that system. All they wanted were a few "key positions" at the top, necessary to support the political policy of the administration. Key positions, forsooth! among postmasters and collectors of customs and internal revenue, purely administrative officers whose duty it is to serve the public (not the party) and to carry out the laws. What have they to do with tariff or free trade or the League of Nations or an International Court or relief to the farmers or any other issue which may divide the parties? As Theodore Roosevelt well said, when he was Civil Service Commissioner, "There are very few places apart from Cabinet positions and the great foreign embassies which have anything to do with the policy of government." When key positions are given to partisans, the other places fall like a row of dominoes under political control and the whole spoils system with its paralyzing abuses is back again. It is through the thickets of such sophistries as these that, in the words of the negro refrain, "Down ole sarpent comes a'crawlin'."

It is not only key positions that these office peddlers desire; their ultimate aim is to get all places restored, and to bring back again the disreputable era of universal spoils.

Luckily the National Civil Service Reform League was able to help stem the current which sought to sweep these "key" positions into political patronage. Some who had come to Washington to "Hardingize" the service were constrained largely by the attitude of President Harding himself to betake themselves to that political obscurity which they were so admirably qualified to adorn.

SPOILS IN THE POSTAL SERVICE

But the encroachments of political patronage in other places, especially among postmasters and rural free delivery carriers, has continued to increase. There is a popular notion that the spoils system is no longer a serious menace. This is far from true. The progress of the competitive system under Presidents Cleveland, Roosevelt and Taft has been followed by a retrograde movement ever since. The war greatly demoralized many branches of the service and President Wilson, though personally friendly to the reform, signed numerous bills excepting important places. Yet during his second term he made a small but valuable contribution to the merit system by prescribing competitive examinations to fill vacancies in presidential postmasterships caused by death, resignation or removal (about 10 per cent of the whole number) by appointing the man highest on the eligible list.

Under President Harding the retrograde movement continued. He prescribed examinations for all presidential postmasterships, yet gave a choice of one of the three highest, a choice so manipulated by politicians that Republicans, and generally those recommended by congressmen and political committees, have almost uniformly been chosen, often without regard to the superior standing of others. The late Postmaster General, Dr. Hubert Work, in a letter to George B. Christian, Secretary to President Harding, on June 29 last, said: "To say that there is no politics in presidential postmasterships would not be true. Other things being equal, we send to the President the name of the Republican, if there is one on the list. If things are unequal and in favor of a Democrat from a service standpoint, we often send in the name of the Democrat, many of whom have been appointed, particularly in southern states." How often conditions are unequal in the