really promote on merit. Some firms report that they keep performance and efficiency records on the basis of which promotion is made. A number of the more advanced companies have classified their positions and standardized their requirements and their salaries. Such procedure, though relatively new in industry, sounds strangely familiar to Civil Service Reformers.

Removals

In 72 out of the 104 companies reporting on the subject of removals, the personnel manager had full jurisdiction, although in some of the corporations the foreman or department head might refuse to keep a worker in his department. In a few such cases the executive is required to give reasons satisfactory to the personnel department. Such a requirement goes even beyond the civil service law, which permits the appointing officer to discharge and merely requires him to file his reasons with the Commission without necessarily satisfying the Commission that they are sufficient reasons.

Tenure

Except in seasonal industries, the tenure of employment in well established corporations seems to be almost as secure as that popularly conceded to civil service employes. Three firms reported that they had no employment problems, as most of their employes had been in their service for years. The International Harvester Company reported that more than 36 per cent of its employes had been employed more than five years. Six hundred employes of the Ingersoll Rand Company qualified early in 1926 for service pins, each having been in its employ for ten years or more. Many other examples of length of tenure of service might be given.

Conclusions

The selection and management of employes is regarded increasingly as one of the chief factors in modern industry. It equals in importance management of finances, materials or production. The object of all personnel work is to secure and maintain a force of workers of the quantity and quality necessary for the most profitable operation of the corporation. The methods of the personnel department have many striking similarities to those of civil service commissions.

Thus the report of the League's industrial survey shows that the commercial world, through an entirely different approach, is reaching the same conclusions as were reached by the Civil Service Reformers through their effort to do away with patronage spoils, namely:

That the greatest economy and production is achieved when appointments and removals are made solely on the basis of fitness and merit;

That fitness and merit are demonstrable and measurable qualities;

That the proper conduct of personnel work requires experts or specialists and cannot wisely be entrusted to executives and department heads as part of their routine duties.

To those who ask "why doesn't the Government adopt the business methods of successful corporations?" we may answer, "It does; in fact, it has shown the way to private business so far as it has applied the Civil Service law to its employes." That more than a majority of the public employes are still outside the merit system shows how far from complete is the task of all those interested in this reform. We have won the debate on purity of politics versus spoils patronage,

but we are far from having won the struggle of efficiency versus waste in government administration.

I congratulate the League that it is continuing this struggle with renewed vigor and is planning to extend the battlefield so that it will include not only the extension of the merit system to services now exempt, but also the simplification of administrative organization so as to reduce duplication and waste. The organization of a special committee to study this subject, composed of such men as Secretary Hoover and the other eminent gentlemen whose names appear in the Report of the Council, should give fresh courage and enthusiasm to all friends of good government.

THE LEAGUE, ITS ATTAINMENTS AND ITS

OPPORTUNITIES

Address of Hon. George McAneny, President of the League

In my appearance before you as President of the National Civil Service Reform League, my mind tends, reminiscently, and I fear, inevitably, toward that time just thirty-five years ago when I was installed, at the meeting then held in Baltimore, as Assistant Secretary of the League, and shortly afterward as its Secretary. The contrast between the nation's civil service of that day and of the present time is striking indeed; the contrast between the merit system as then established, and that system as the country knows and understands it to-day, no less striking. The New York Association, the pioneer, was then fifteen years old; the League eleven. The Association was organized fifty years ago,

-was it not exactly fifty years ago to-day,—in the library of Dr. Bellows, who served as its first President, shortly, however, to be succeeded by George William Curtis. Mr. Curtis in turn became the first President of the League, and until 1892 the League pressed its militant campaign and scored its many victories under his superb leadership. When he passed away, at the height of his unique standing, both as a statesman and active campaigner for the public good, and as a man of letters, came Carl Schurz, who served in turn as President of both bodies until 1903. It was fortunate indeed, not only for the League and the Association and the men who fought their battles, but for the country itself, that for twenty unbroken years the fate of the civil service reform cause itself rested so

largely with these two incomparable men.

How fortunate their leadership seemed to the members of the staff, working under their immediate direction, I could not adequately tell you. I may at least assure you that, to me, the experience of association with them and of proceeding from day to day beneath their tutelage, was a thing never to be forgotten.

Within officialdom itself the shining names of the period of our beginnings were those of Representative Jenckes of Rhode Island, whose report to the House, immediately following the Civil War, first brought attention to the administrative abuses the war had left in its trail. Then, in 1872, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois introduced and carried in the Senate the first actual statutory enactment, authorizing the President to establish rules for the governing of appointments within. the Executive departments, and for his own government and guidance, as the Executive arbiter and head. No substantial action followed for the reason that Congress appropriated no money for carrying this first bit of legislation into effect, and for the further reason that the task of actually battling for the infant reform,' in or out of Congress, was a little too much for President Grant to tackle.

But then came certain tragic happenings, that well might have come earlier. Lincoln had once said to Schurz that he believed that "this thing," pointing to the swarms of office seekers about the White House, that "this thing threatened the existence of Republican government itself." What happened but fifteen years later to Garfield might well have happened to any of his predecessors, of the war time, or the post-war time periods. The assassination of Garfield by a disappointed office seeker, crushing though it was to the heart of the country, flashed public attention in dra