does not understand why it is that after a civil service examination is held the postmaster should appear to be selected as a result of political influence.

I do not believe the Civil Service Commission and the service generally should be placed in any such position, although I frankly admit, as I have stated, that imperfect as the system is, the government on the whole is getting a better class of postmasters than it ever secured before.

Every community of any considerable size has a number of doctors, lawyers, ministers, merchants, and manufacturers, but under the government system there is only one postmaster. It is obvious, therefore, that it will be perfectly logical to establish and build a new profession or career such as that of the trained postmaster, but it cannot be done as long as the position is subjected to the uncertainties of partisan politics, and the distribution of political patronage.

Given an opportunity, the United States Civil Service Commission, by the inclusion of postmasters in the classified competitive service will be able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of any reasonable man or woman that trained postmasters selected and continued in office upon merit will give the people the best administration of duties of their office.

Progress Has Been Constant.

Now just a word as to the name of your worthy organization. I trust you will pardon my presumption. Forty years ago there was but a handful-14,000 in the classified service-and more than 100,000 outside. Today the principle is established and 400,000 employees are under the merit system. I find that nearly every activity of the National Civil Service Reform League is construed by the public as a criticism or reflection upon the Civil Service Commission. I am

wondering if the time is not at hand to call your organization the National Civil Service Progress League in view of the great distance it has traveled in four decades.

The nation has gone far along the lines of civil service reform, improvement and efficiency, and we are now so nearly over the top numerically with respect to the total number now employed in the executive branch of the government that it is no wild flight of the imagination to foresee the time when the executive branch at least will be almost 100 per cent classified, including postmasters, revenue collectors, and the prohibition unit.

I shall not take up your time by discussing rural mail carriers because the eagle eye of President William Dudley Foulke, as well as other members of the organization, understand the amount of trouble this branch of the service gives us all. Even in these classified positions it is certain that the element of politics enters into some appointments. We agree with you that eternal vigilance is the price of successful, effective, and continuing efficiency in the classified service, and that efforts should not be relaxed in making the service bomb proof as well as immune from insidious attacks, both from without and from within.

Violations Comparatively Few.

Yet, I would not be fair to the organization over which I have the honor to preside, or to the federal government as a whole, if I failed to give you my observation and belief that the infractions of and infringements upon the classified service are not so numerous or alarming as they seem. In proportion to the more than 400,000 people employed violations are not so serious as to threaten the breakdown or seriously affect the prestige of the classified service.

We have the co-operation and sympathy of President Calvin Coolidge. It will be remembered by your President and Secretary and Mr. Dana that when we made a call upon the President he voluntarily solicited recommendations looking to the improvement and extension of the civil service. People generally are responsive to any reasonable appeal, and I know of nothing of an economic or political nature for which a better case may be made than the destruction of the "spoils system" and the continuous expansion of the merit system.

I have never found it difficult to secure a hearing when a cause is just, and I shall consider it my special duty to do my utmost in carrying the civil service message to Garcia. The nation is being influenced by a better national and official conscience. Appointments made upon merit, without regard to political, religious or other such considerations are a convincing symptom of a healthy body politic, and it cannot be successfully denied that your organization has contributed immeasurably to that result.

The millenium in public service has not been reached nor will it ever be reached. There will never come a time when there will not be room for improvement. There is an opportunity and need for vigilance of the character that your organization supplies. The situation is encouraging, however, and the cause moves steadily forward.

I think it is true of the classified service as of other activities in every day life, that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, and that the best success is to labor. It is our duty and it will be our pleasure to carry on.

ADDRESS OF RICHARD H. DANA

Evening Session, December 6, 1923

Daniel Webster once said, in effect, it is well at times to recur to simple fundamental principles, so let me ask for your attention to this important truth-that the spoils system is despotism and civil service reform seeks to re-establish the very foundations of free representative government.

Now, for a moment remember your Roman History -how the Caesars refused to be called Kings but took no higher title than that of General, or Imperator; how they let the people continue to go to the polls and vote as they used to under the Republic; how each Imperator held the highly important office of praetor of the people that peculiar old Roman officer or judge who stood out against the Upper Class or Patricians on behalf of the Lower Classes or Plebs, and for his protection had a Praetorian Guard-this military guard the Emperators then brought within the city walls to intimidate any revolt against their growing power; that Augustus, the second Emperor and the first to establish his power on a strong basis, was nothing more or less than a political boss-he saw to it that no candidate was brought before the people for their franchise who had not his sanction, so that while the people went through the form of voting between two or three candidates, they were in practice limited in their choicethe freedom of selection was taken away, and the Emperator, of course, became the absolute despot.

Now, how about our spoils system, that system which establishes a political boss and which creates the political machine or Praetorian Guard, made up not of fighting soldiers but of office holders and who receive. their appointments because of the political work they are to do for the boss who put them in. The boss is sometimes our representative in Senate or House, or

Municipal Government, and sometimes he is the power behind these representatives, but the machine works all the year round for the nomination and election of those to whom its members owe their appointment, and so it continues in one vicious circle.

This explains why the direct primaries have failed to accomplish all that was expected of them. There are about 250,000 precincts in the United States, with some 600 voters in each precinct, and to every one of these precincts is appointed a captain of the party organization-almost always an office holder-and he has his subordinates working under his order and each captain works under the control of a colonel, of a larger district, and each colonel under the control of the general or boss of the State. In that way the party machines secure uniformity of action, while the well meaning citizens, with varied views, scatter their votes and are ineffective in securing those who will represent them rather than represent the general-in-chief of the party in power. And thus it is, excepting so far as civil service reform has taken the offices out of politics that we are ruled by a despotism as absolute as that of the Caesars; and had we not secured a considerable amount of reform some forty years ago, that despotism would have been so firmly entrenched that the hope of fighting against it would have been lost and the government Praetorian Guard and its rulers. So much for our political institutions.

Now, as to the morality of the question. Has any man more of the right to give an office to one who is not well fitted for the work, because he will be active in politics on behalf of his patron, or to a capable man who engages to give his best energies to his boss rather than to his official duties; than the President of the U. S. would have the right to take the pictures, carpets