and furniture of the White House and give them to those who will secure his nomination at the National convention of his party?

Let us take another view, and that is the effect upon our young men who are growing up into manhood. Under the spoils system they see that success comes from pull and favoritism and not from character and capacity, while civil service reform tends to exactly the opposite-it elevates character and capacity and discourages attempts at pull and favoritism.

To these principles of fundamental liberty and of honesty in government, we have a financial ally, for unlike some other good causes, civil service reform, especially with its full, modern program, saves the money of the people. Under the spoils system unnecessary positions are created, that there may be more patronage for political purposes, and the persons appointed under the spoils system were far below the capacity of those appointed through competitive tests of fitness under the civil service laws, so that it took more persons to do the government work and the work was poorly done. This has been proved over and over again, and the evidence of those in official positions who have seen the results of both systems, assert that at least one-third of the expense of the government is saved where the reform of the civil service is in operation.

But there is something beyond that. Wherever there is a fairly permanent service there is a tendency of the employees to become bureaucratic and slow, and of those at the heads of bureaus to have more employees than are necessary, it being a frailty of human nature to judge their own importance by the number of subordinates under them. It is part of our modern program in order to prevent the evils incident to a fairly stable

service and to encourage an extension of the reform, to have industrial experts employed under civil service commissions in the departments of the government, in the same way that they are used in large private industries with such great success that concerns losing money, have been turned into profitable enterprises.

This system was tried within the City of Chicago and it saved 5,000,000 of dollars a year, and in our great public service-national, state, county and municipalwith a payroll of three and a half billions of dollars a year, it would doubtless save hundreds of millions in addition to the saving that is made by appointment on competitive tests as against appointment through politics.

Then, again, the civil service system ought to be extended upward. As Miss Lathrop has shown, we ought to have brains in the heads-that is the proper place for brains as well as in all the lower positions. We ought to have permanent under-secretaries of the great departments at Washington. A cousin of mine was appointed assistant secretary of the U. S. Treasury; he was a lawyer; the law cases were put largely in his hands; but there had been so complete an overturn in the department after the last presidential election, though there was no change of party in power, that he found nobody who knew about the claims against the government and he had to go to the lawyers representing those claims in order to find how the cases stood.

Again, when we ask a man like Hughes to come to the head of the State Department, we ought to supply him with what every large civilized government supplies to the head of its foreign department-a body of highly trained experts who know international law international relations and modern history through and through. and who have studied the traits of, or even

known personally, some of the leading men of the various countries of the world, and then the head of our State Department will be equipped to compete with similar high officials in other countries.

This entire change in the under-secretaries of the departments fails to give us continuity of administrative policies. Let me illustrate this. After the Spanish War, Mr. Root being Secretary of the War Depart ment, a system was established of securing the names and addresses of a large number of physicians, nurses, and experts on purchases for the commissary depart ment, and all necessary personnel for an army going into war, and that was kept as long as Mr. Root and his assistant, Mr. Sanger, were in that department. Then a complete change came. New officials saw there were some boxes on shelves against the walls-nobody knew or cared what they meant; the old lists became stale, for they were not renewed or kept up; no one in the department knew of their existence but a few underclerks; so, when we came into the great European War, the lists were stale and all this early work was wasted.

So is it in municipal government. Those municipal governments that have been successful-such as of cities of Germany, the City of Paris and the cities of Great Britain-have permanent experts, free from any concern as to partisan elections, who carry out the policies that have been settled on by the policy determining branches, and in that way contracts are taken out of politics. The financial saving of this is enor

mous.

Let us for a moment consider what would be the results of a program like ours thoroughly carried out: There will be no mercenary party workers, busy in securing the nomination and election of those who ap

point them; there will be no rewards of office for purely partisan work; the contracts will be taken out of poli-, tics; there will be a great saving for doing beneficient work which the public now cannot afford to undertake; and that work will be done by able persons, skilled in their vocations, and we will have taken out from government those inducements to enter politics for the sole purpose of making what they can out of politics. In this way it will tend to raise the standards of those who are elected as our representatives; and for our growing young men, they will see that it is no longer pull and favoritism, but character and capacity, that are the roads to success. And finally, it will arouse interest in self-government when the voters feel that they are not fighting against a great political machine that has almost all the arms and ammunition, but that they will have a fair chance to express their wishes at primaries and elections.

All together, what could be more fundamental, more thrifty, more elevating for our American institutions, than the reform, in all its parts, which we advocate?

Resolutions of the League

Adopted December 7, 1923

I.

The Federal Government is being greatly impaired by the spoils system masquerading in Civil Service Reform clothes. When President Roosevelt classified Rural Free Delivery Carriers and began the classification of Fourth Class Postmasters, he provided for the selection of the highest eligible, thereby eliminating political appointments. When President Wilson provided for the selection of presidential postmasters in cases of death, resignation, or removal, by competitive examination, he also provided that the highest man should be appointed. This rule has been changed so as to give a choice among the highest three, which is the average number of applicants for postmasterships. These three names are submitted to Congressmen of the dominant party in violation of law and are otherwise so manipulated that the choice has become mainly political. More than 100,000 places are subject to this manipulation.

The League urges the President to go back to the rule of one, which will not only serve as an aid to the health and strength of the President, but will also secure to the country trained postmasters with stable careers.

II.

Through special Acts of Congress, the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau, the Veterans' Bureau, experts in the Shipping Board, the Tariff Commission, and some employees of the Internal Revenue Bureau are exempted from the Civil Service laws. In contrast to the scandals and flagrant inefficiency in all these Departments, is the honorable record nade by the capable men appointed under the Civil Service law in the Anti-Narcotic Bureau, the Railway Mail Service, the clerical service generally, and other Bureaus of the Government.

III.

The League recommends to Congress a general act giving the President power to classify under the Civil Service law, at his discretion, any places hitherto exempted by acts of Congress. This will enable him to avoid the gross scandals that invariably accompany spoils system appointments.

IV.

The League condemns the unjustifiable removals made in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the forced resignation secured by Dr. Work, Secretary of the Interior, of