to explain in the action of those whom our association attempted to influence towards legislative action.

Our work along educational lines has met with a greater degree of success, as evidenced by the unanimous passage of resolutions by a body of a thousand teachers which met last week. The resolutions which I have in hand are as follows:

"We believe that the best interests of the teachers of the state will be subserved by the enactment of such laws as will vest in a civil service commission, acting under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Instruction, the power to pass upon the employment and dismissal of teachers in the public schools. Therefore, be it

"Resolved, That we urge that the teachers and a legislative committee to be appointed by the county superintendent use their best efforts in securing the enactment of such laws as will make the office of school superintendents and teachers in this commonwealth permanent during competency and good behaviour."

I offer this as evidence of the growth of a sentiment in favor of civil service reform in this particular locality since this was the spontaneous action of the teachers upon their own initiative.

I think perhaps the most effective work done by our association in the past year, though entirely outside of the scope of a civil service reform association, was in supplying the initiative for the formation of a committee for the purpose of punishing election frauds per-. petrated at the November election in 1906. Without going into this matter I would say that the efforts of that committee, which was instigated by this association, have resulted, only a few days ago, in an election in our county to which no honest man can take exception, and therefore we feel that in thus being the pioneer of a local association whose activity is restricted to a small neighborhood. I believe the first one of the kind in Pennsylvania, we have done something which has already justified itself and affords an example which other communities of our state can well follow.

Mr. Philemon H. Tuck submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Maryland:

Mr. Foulke has told me to-day that our local association, our Maryland association, has been one of the strongest, and has probably done as much for good as any other in the land. We organized about five months after the adoption of the civil service act. Since then we have had as many as a thousand members. They have been a leaven to the body politic and have made it sweeter and better. We have to-day in our service men who have been with us from the beginning. Our honored president, Mr. Bonaparte, was a member of the original Executive Committee. Two years after the formation of our association there were but fourteen thousand men under the civil service law, although at that time I think there were as many as one hundred and ten thousand offices under the general government. Two years ago out of three hundred and twenty-five thousand office holders, one hundred and eighty-four thousand were in the classified service.

We think that by our nearness to Washington, by our constant observation of the law as it works there, we have succeeded in obtaining in Maryland a local law applying the merit system in our school affairs, and to our fire and our police departments. I think you will agree with me that in any state or city these are the three great influences for good or for evil.

We had an election in Baltimore last Tuesday. The day was so quiet you might have thought the people were preparing for a public funeral. I regret to say it was a funeral for some of my friends. But be that as it may, formerly a murder might have occured there almost on any election day; there was always some rioting. But under the auspices of the Reform League, which is a very close ally of ours, a decent and fair election law was passed ten years ago, and our elections are conducted with almost as much decorum as a man would expect to find in a church. No voter is permitted within a hundred feet of the polls unless for the purpose of casting his ballot. And all that is attributed to our magnificent police and to this excellent law, which had its inception

when Mr. Joseph Packard, one of the foremost lawyers of our city, was the president of the Reform League. He is now president of the School Board, an unpaid body of gentlemen, who have made the school system of Baltimore second to none in all this country. The members of the Reform League are very often members of our own association, Mr. Packard for years having been a member of the executive committee.

We have had practically no graft in Baltimore or Maryland so far as I know. Our fire department is controlled by three commissioners, who are governed in making their appointments by the local civil service regulations. I am informed that Mr. George W. Gail, who has recently retired from the presidency of that board, has never for any purpose of his own touched one cent of the salary. Recently there were two firemen who met their deaths in Baltimore under particularly trying circumstances. One-half of Mr. Gail's salary he gave to one widow, the other half to the other.

Now, in respect to our police, we are in almost as good a condition. We have three commissioners appointed by the Governor subject to confirmation by the Senate; all men are appointed to the force after competitive examination, upon the report of three police examiners. Until eighteen months ago when a vacancy was to be filled the examiners would send up to the board the names of all those who had passed the examination, so that an appointment might be made from any one of these names whether it appeared at the bottom or at the top of the list. At our annual meeting a year ago last spring we called attention to this construction of the law, maintaining that favoritism could be shown, and that we did not think it was being fairly administered. Within seven weeks thereafter the police examiners and board took cognizance of what we had done, and from that time till now when a vacancy occurs the name of the man who stands first on the list is sent up. We assert that the Civil Service Association of Maryland has brought about this great improvement in the personnel of the force.

Mr. William W. Vaughan submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Massachusetts:

We may have the right to point with pride to our antiquity but I am afraid that there is nothing very dramatic that I can report or nothing very exciting the last year for Massachusetts. It is the same old fight to hold what we have got and to try to get something more. Now, I am constantly asked questions like this, "Hasn't civil service reform got a very strong hold on the people of Massachusetts?" I answer, "Yes, certainly, you can see that. We started early and you will see that there is a very strong feeling for it as people are in favor of it." "Then why is it," the next question is, "that you cannot get anything out of your legislature when your legislature is supposed to represent the people?" Well, the answer is really a perfectly simple one, that upon the question of promoting the civil service reform measure the legislature does not represent the people. They merely represent themselves. The best illustration of the situation was reported in an anecdote told me by a former speaker of the house, who said that upon meeting one of the members of his house in the street he asked him with reference to some civil service reform measure then pending, whether he could support it, and he was answered in this way: "It is all very well for you to stand for civil service but you can get elected whenever you want to. I can't get elected unless I can do something for the boys." Now, that is just the whole trouble with the situation. The smaller politician in the legislature does not like any more than any other human being to deprive himself of certain powers and privileges, the few that are left. It is not a popular thing to saw off the branch on which you are sitting. That is the difficulty we meet with constantly in the legislature. We passed an act early there, but it would be quite difficult, I am afraid, to get that same act through to-day. Politicians are sometimes a little bit careless, and don't always perceive how much these reform measures are going to help them in the long run.

We have a regular fight all the time to hold what we have got. This year the honors were about even. We

failed to pass the act to try to put the heads of our departments under the civil service roof. We needed it badly enough in Boston as the last investigation showed, but we did not get it. On the other hand, we did succeed, as we have succeeded before, but after a fight, in defeating the constantly renewed attempt to put the whole civil service of the state into the hands of the veterans of the Spanish War. It was a pretty hard fight and not a great majority in our favor, but we were somewhat encouraged by the fact that was mentioned at our Council meeting this morning, that one of the gentlemen who voted very strongly for the measure and who has been campaigning for election and pointing with pride. to his record on that subject has had his pride somewhat diminished by the fact that the electors have decided to let him stay at home, and we hope that some other similar instances may come and help us. But on the whole we can report nothing better than a standoff.

The only other thing that has come up in Massachusetts that might be of interest to report has been an incident of this constantly recurring difficulty of applying fixed rules made for the average man to people of exceptional ability who think, and possibly justly, that they can select their own subordinates for their own use better than any set of rules or any commission can do it for them. That may be perfectly true. The benevolent despot may be the best government that exists. The difficulty is of course that all despots are not universally benevolent. We have that same case in Massachusetts where a commission of ladies and gentlemen had been in the habit of appointing their appointees in their discretion. The civil service commission found that they ought to be under the rules and the question was brought up. There was, I am sorry to say, a good deal of temper shown on the subject, both sides had a certain amount of right, and the civil service re from association poured all the oil possible upon the waters, but there was a good deal of a storm and I am afraid the oil was not quite sufficient and that there is more or less ground-swell still running. That particular incident has been settled but the situation will sometimes recur.