and labor. Hearings and legal work are in charge of counsel directly subordinate to the Commission.

In the examinations for the superior grades the Commission has shown a very commendable tendency to waive all residential limitations on the theory that local pride is better served by competent employees than by keeping the offices exclusively among citizens. The practice is to waive residential qualifications in examinations for places requiring "technical, professional or scientific knowledge, or manual skill of a high order." (This is so provided by rule 2, section 2.)

A system for reporting daily the number of sixty day appointments in each department has operated to reduce the number of such appointments by one-third. In the class of unskilled labor comprising about 5,000 men, there were Dec. 1, 1909 less than two hundred temporary appointees, and in the official class there are about 290 out of 11,000. The heads of departments have discovered that the annoyance of sixty day appointments is so great that it is much better to have nothing to do with them. The president of the civil service commission says the commission is prepared to fill any ordinary position within three days after receiving requisition from the standing eligible lists. It takes about a month to prepare a list on examination.

The commission has also arranged with each department of the city to detail one employee to handle pay rolls and transact routine business with the civil service office. These employees are under the direction of the commission. This provides a force of men who may gradually acquire training in both civil service procedure and departmental requirements.

We are informed that all pay rolls are checked over monthly or fortnightly in the civil service office on time schedule, this being part of a system lately adopted by the controller, its purpose being to pay employees in their respective places of duty without taking them away from their work, thus abolishing the pay roll window system.

The civil service commission has adopted a practice in respect to hearings and removals, which it believes to be liberal and fair. While the right of the head of a depart

ment to discharge his employees is not recognized the board for hearings considers the charges, whatever the employee may have to say in his own defense (usually without the presence of professional counsel on either side), and decides the case as nearly as possible from the point of view of an ordinary employer, entering its order, not on evidence which would necessarily satisfy the technical rules of evidence in criminal or civil cases under the common law, but on evidence which it deems sufficient for the good of the service. About 500 cases are heard annually. In the police department 286 cases were heard last year; 35 members of the force dismissed, 183 fined and in 68 cases, charges were found not sustained. This practice has been upheld by the courts. The supreme court has held that if a hearing of a civil service employee is conducted in the manner pointed out by the statute and the rules, before the proper board, and evidence is heard tending to sustain the charges, the action of the civil service commission based upon the findings of the board is not reviewable by the courts. The commission is the judge of the weight and sufficiency of the evidence.

In the police and fire departments, the commission has recently established an annual physical and medical examination which is calculated to weed out the diseased and physically unfit. It has created a desire on the part of each group or squad of police to excel some other group or squad, and each fire engine house to make a better general showing than some other house. As sporting events they have considerable general popularity in the force. A case of syphilis in an advanced stage carefully concealed by the victim from his associates and discovered by the medical staff also gave the medical examination much popularity.

The medical staff also serves the police retiring board, of which the president of the civil service commission, the health commissioner and a distinguished physician are members. Police officers over sixty-two years of age are summoned before it, examined by the medical staff annually, and under the authority of the chief of police may be retired or assigned to lighter duty.

In the new city hall the civil service commission will have an entire floor with gymnasium, laboratory, medical and mental examination rooms, bureau of laborers and offices.

These steps are believed to be in the main advances in the merit system. Officers and committees of this association have been frequently consulted and have advised with the members of the commission. We believe that the main purpose of the commission has been to increase the efficiency of the law in its administration, and that this purpose has been in a material degree accomplished by the present commission.

The attorney for our association has during the past year prepared and filed briefs as amicus curiae in an important case decided by the supreme court of Illinois. The city law exempts heads of principal departments. In the past this association has resisted attempts made to evade the spirit of the law by the creation of new departments and the multiplication of these exemptions. We have urged that new departments with new heads should be created only when in the fair exercise of judgment the city council found that the increase of business required such legislation. In the case decided this year by the supreme court, we adhered to this principle and endeavored to obtain a ruling defining the proper exercise of this municipal power and defining what constitutes a bona fide department. The court however did not consider itself called upon to establish a general rule upon the subject. The department in question was the smoke department, and the court held that it was properly a principal department and its head within the exemption. (Plotke vs Lower, 236 Illinois 608).

During the past year the legislature of Illinois passed the statute entitled

"An Act to revise the laws relating to charities," etc., providing for a general board of administration with liberal powers for the supervision of the charitable institutions of the state.

This act specially provided by Section II that

"All employes of the board of administration, and all employes of the charities commission and of the state charitable institutions, and the director,

psychologist and employes of the state psychopathic Institute shall be appointed under and subject to the provisions of 'An act to regulate the civil service of the state of Illinois' approved May 11, 1905, in force July 1, 1905, as amended: Provided that the managing officers of all state charitable institutions are hereby exempted from the operation of the civil service law." (Ill. Laws 1909, pp. 102-123.)

The law contains other valuable provisions for the improvement of this important branch of the state civil service. This was a substantial victory for the merit system in that for the first time the state civil service law covers all the employes of two entire departments at Springfield. It is to be noted, however, that the new charity law was impaired in another feature. As originally drawn the act provided special qualifications for each of the five members of the board of administration, but as passed the Act provides such qualifications for only two members, the alienist and the fiscal supervisor.

The Civil Service Association presented bills extending the state and county laws to the last state legislature, and joined delegations advocating them before the house and senate committee. Both parties stood pledged by their platforms to the merit system, but at no time was there manifested any intention on the part of the legislators of passing either bill.

Our Association has undertaken the task of urging upon the city authorities the need of devising some plan for enforcing section 14 of the Act by providing efficiency records and investigators. Section 14 provides that "The Commission shall investigate the conduct and actions of the appointees in the classified service and inquire as to the nature, tenure and compensation of all offices in the public service." Growing impatience on the part of the general public with any measure which seems to protect inefficiency and the fact that the Commission is the only branch possessing the requisite legal power and the necessary data for administering efficiency regulations forces this great problem upon us. The evils complained of are common to all public service. A de

partment head has stated that in his department it takes five men to do what three men in private employ would probably do, and a well known expert intimately acquainted with public work has stated that in one department they have a third too many men. A comprehensive system for continually recording merit and demerit in every branch of the public service must create machinery for overhauling, reviewing and correcting the work of a group, e. g., bureau, grade or department as a whole, and of entering merits and demerits on records of individuals.

The prime objects of the system should be to keep the department head informed about his own men, to detect and check any tendency to allow several employees to continue to drone along at a job which could be handled by one man, to encourage timid or good natured department heads to get rid of dead wood, to act as an antidote to shiftlessness and fossilizing tendencies, to save money and to provide perfectly definite and fixed tests uniform in their operation over grades having similar duties, so that every employee shall feel that there is an important and real difference to him between merit and inefficiency. The application of section 14, while difficult, does not present obstacles as great as those which the early commissions had to face in standardizing examinations. There certainly are more or less satisfactory means for ascertaining whether an employee is in the proper health and strength for the performance of his special duties, whether he is punctually spending his full time. with the city, whether his superior is satisfied or dissatisfied with the manner in which he handles men under him or administers some geographical unit, and whether he is guilty of neglect or breach of duty, either personally or through employees under him.

The plan is outlined as follows:

Under Sec. 14.

Establishment of bureau of efficiency under the civil service commission charged with the duty

(a) of keeping individual efficiency records for employees appointed under the civil service act, common laborers excepted.

(b) Organizing and directing investigators.