day, 1904, without the certification of the Civil Service Commission.

In case the suit is decided against the auditor I trust the Civil Service Commission will amend the rules to provide for the certification of pay rolls of departments in the classified service. I mention this at this time because I think all Commissions in municipalities will probably have to adopt the same rule wherever the charter provisions give such power. It entails extra labor on the Commission, but, it is in my judgment the only means possible by which a check can be had upon employees in the classified service.

The political assessment clause in the charter is a constant "bone of contention" between the members of the Commission, or at least it is several weeks prior to any election. Civil service reformers throughout the United States should make a most earnest effort to see that the provisions in the city charters regarding political assessments and work at the polls on election days by employees in the classified service should be so strong and so mandatory that the Civil Service Commissions must take heed of these provisions.

The small measure of civil service which we have in Denver is a step in the right direction.

Presidential Offices, the United States Senate and a Merit System.

FOR

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

OR three-quarters of a century the Presidential officials have, in the main, been appointed at the dictation of Senators for political purposes. These officers consist of all postmasters with salaries of $1,000 a year or over, the foreign ministers and consuls, collectors of customs and internal revenue, district attorneys, Indian agents and a few others. There are about 7,000 of them, 5,406 being the higher postmasters. They form the great body of the chief executive officers of the country. With the exception of cabinet officers, foreign ambassadors and ministers, and possibly the district attorneys, the duties of these officials are in no way political. There is not a Democratic way and a Republican way of assorting and delivering letters. Enforcing the internal revenue and tariff laws is a matter of honesty and capacity, and not party opinion. To use these positions for purposes of party organization in aid of the political ambitions of Senators is not only an abuse of public trust, but, as it is hardly necessary to add, tends to political corruption and party despotism. Moreover, the public service ought to be a life career, with these higher positions as rewards gained by, and thus stimulating, special merit and ability. Indeed, the evils of the present system are so well known that the only question of to-day is as to the choice of remedy. The remedies proposed classify themselves into two kinds, one a personal one and the other institutional. The first is for the President, single-handed, as the laws are to-day, to fight the Senate, and the other is the establishing of definite methods of aiding the President in making appointments.

Mr. James Brice puts great importance on political

institutions. While the moral character of the people is fundamental, institutions which tend to make vice easy and virtue hard, or just the reverse, tend, on the one hand, to lower the fundamental morality and weaken its efficiency, or, on the other hand, to raise it and give it force and expression. He might have gone further and said, as his illustrations implied, that those institutions, to be useful, must be definite, visible and concrete. They must be like buoys, marking the channel, enabling the captain to note and the onlookers to see if the true course is kept. Without these buoys the best meaning pilot may unawares go astray, especially in the mists such as befog public life, and the onlookers cannot tell just when or how far the ship is diverted until too late to bring her back.

What better illustration of this principle can we have than in the history of our own reform? In the early part of the century, from 1830 on, the great statesmen, Webster, Calhoun, Clay and others, spied out the evils of the spoils system and foretold the enormities to which it would grow with truly prophetic vision. Party platforms demanded reform, and yet, when in power, the word of promise made to the ear has been broken to the hope-let me add perhaps also to the honest hope-of those that spoke it. No lasting reform was accomplished, however, until the passage of the Pendleton Bill. No lasting reform, I say. Indeed, there were transient reforms in exceptional cases, as in the Department of the Interior under our Schurz, in the Census under Carroll D. Wright, and in the Naval Office of New York under our Colonel Silas W. Burt. These transient efforts, however, only showed the need of more lasting institutions by the very ease and quickness with which their successors returned to the old methods. The Pendleton Bill, on the other hand, established definite, visible and, we believe, wisely planned institutions. How easy for an administration to follow in the right course thus marked out! The very small number of changes in the positions under the civil service rules, compared with the nearly clean sweeps made contemporaneously in the places not under the law, with every change of party, illustrates the difference. Again, the onlookers-we civil service reformers and the public

generally-how easily we can see if the channei is kept in the part thus buoyed! In going over the record of an administration, it is easy to know whether or not the law is enforced and improved, and its scope enlarged, or the reverse, but when it comes to the unbuoyed part of the harbor, to the offices outside the law, we feel lost; just what influences a President has resisted or submitted to no one can exactly tell.

Again, as to the character of any special appointee, who can more than guess? One we suspect to be bad has the most glowing endorsement of clergymen, doctors, lawyers, bankers and railroad presidents for the highest character in his community. Another whom we suspect was chosen for political reasons, has a record for being a remarkably efficient and faithful official, as well as an active politician. Some of us may conclude, on the whole, that one administration is better or worse, has made fewer or more mistakes than another; but if our opinion is challenged, we have only a mass of hearsay evidence, gathered mostly from a partisan press, on which to rely.

Let us apply these principles, then, to our problem. The problem is no easy one, as Mr. Schurz said in an address at Baltimore two years ago. Let us examine the facts. The annual salary of these 7,000 Presidential officials is about $15,000,000. The positions of Presidential postmasters and the important United States consuls make nearly nine-tenths of the total number. Except the foreign positions, these offices are scattered over the whole length and breadth of the country. They are by statute almost all four year term offices. By the Constitution of the United States the "President shall nominate and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint" these officials.* By Section 7 of the civil

*It is possible that the higher grade postmasters may be such "inferior officers" as, by Act of Congress, may be made appointive without the consent of the Senate. Article 2 of Section 2 of the United States Constitution, after providing by name for the appointment as above of "ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the supreme court," goes on, "and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law; but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such in

service law, as commonly construed, they cannot be put under the civil service rules "unless by direction of the Senate."

As to the first plan of wholly ignoring the advice of the Senate, supposing it to be constitutional, how is the President to know the qualifications of the various applicants, or who, besides those applicants, might be better to fill the various vacancies, or who now in office are fit to be retained? On whom should he rely for information in the various cities from Santiago and Seattle in the West, to St. Augustine and Calais in the East? Lawyers, doctors, bankers and clergymen? But who will select these in cities not familiar to the President, and guarantee their advice to be non-political and wholly disinterested? How does he know that by relying on these strangers he is not playing into the hands of the very Senators whose interested advice we want him to avoid? Experience shows petitions signed by such people are very unreliable. An experienced official last Winter said, in substance, the smaller the capacity, the greater the applicant's endorsements. In some cases a President can, as President Roosevelt has, consult with some reliable friends as to the fitness of persons suggested by Senators for appointment, and require better suggestions if the first are bad, but such cases are exceptional. Taking the four year term law into account, a President has to consider about six appointments a day for every working day of his four years. In many cases, to be sure, reappointments will follow as a matter of course; but still the number of appointments is far too great for any President to manage without something to aid him in the choice. Even unopposed reappointments need consideration. The very lack of opposition often comes, not from any special fitness of the official, but because of his political usefulness to the Senators of his State. The President might say ferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments." To change the law may be desirable, but it would be in the nature of a new institution to aid the President, and would belong in the second class of remedies. As the laws are to-day, the constitutional provisions as to appointment of first, second and third class postmasters are obligatory upon the President of the United States.