and these exemptions made, the executive committee approving without a dissenting vote."

Mayor Magee, at the very beginning of his administration, informed the commission that he desired it to enforce the law and he has sustained it in doing so. My two colleagues, Mr. Chester D. Potter, who is president of the commission, and Mr. John B. Townley, are both regular Republicans and well known newspaper men of Pittsburgh. Their effort has uniformly been to fairly and honestly enforce the law. That this has been accomplished may be clearly seen from the fact that since Mayor Magee took office there have only been fiftytwo persons discharged from city positions. The new commission has instituted some important reforms, which the experience gained by their predecessors showed to be advisable, so that I have no hesitation in saying that the civil service law in our city is now better executed under the administration of Mayor Magee than it was under that of his predecessor.

Those questions which have been receiving much consideration at the hands of the commission, and which they are still seeking proper solution for, are those of promotion, leaves of absence, and the proper keeping of an efficiency record. I might add that while naturally there has been and still is much opposition to the civil service law, from party leaders and their followers who hoped that this administration would ignore the law and provide offices for a multitude of people, and this feeling was at first shared in by some city officials, yet that this feeling now counts for less each day, for it is rapidly being learned that the law is being honestly enforced and that those who desire city positions must follow the course prescribed by it. City officials also who have appointments to make have discovered that the law is their greatest protector against the hordes of claimants for office whose demands it would be impossible for them to satisfy, and such officials are being converted from active opponents of the law into friends, or at least into passive acquiescents with its provisions. Therefore, I end as I began, by stating that I bring a message of good cheer to the friends of real civil service

reform, from the great city which I have the honor to represent.

In lieu of the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Buffalo, Hon. Francis Almy, one of the members of the Buffalo Civil Service Commission, reported on the work of that commission as follows:

The most important work of the Buffalo Commission this year has been the putting of 35 more positions in the competitive class,-19 of these positions having heretofore been exempt, 7 qualifying and 9 labor. We have also put 10 positions heretofore exempt into the qualifying class, and 12 labor positions into this class also. The competitive class now includes almost all the higher clerical positions, including cashiers and paymasters in the different departments, almost all positions in the Law Department, and many positions styled "foreman" the duties. of which are supervising and inspecting the labor of others. A number of assistant foremen have been changed from the labor to the qualifying class, and now have to undergo a non-competitive oral examination.

We are doing a little more each year with oral examinations, for positions where temperament is of importance. In an examination for police captains this year, the police commissioners especially asked us to consider in our examinations the personality and presence of the men, saying that they had to do this in their appointments, and that it would save them considerable annoyance and friction if we could take it into account in the eligible lists. We had the candidates appear in full uniform, had them march singly the length of a long hall to a platform where our commission sat, and had each answer a few questions. We have used oral examinations (always as auxiliary examinations only) also for the positions of tuberculosis inspector, probation officer, and court attendant, and expect to do so for managing clerk of the law department.

We give practical examinations where we can to advantage. In a recent examination for stokers we took the men out on the fire tugs and made them stoke the fires and answer various practical questions. For police and fire drivers we have made the men hitch up and drive the

horses; for steam firing we have examined men in the boiler room of the great Ellicott Square office building, while to get workers for the city forester we have set men to climbing trees and cutting branches high in the air. Our aim is to find what the appointing officer needs, and then to find the best men we can for his needs, by whatever seems in each case the best method of procedure.

Mr. Charles G. Morris submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Connecticut:

The chief function of the Connecticut Civil Service Reform Association appears to the unwary to be to eat dinners, but when it is known that the Association had an existence in embryo or larval form of 22 years before it ate anything, a fair appetite for annual dinners on emergence therefrom is not to be wondered at. We have been requested by a member who has taken part neither in our work nor in our play to change the name to the Society for Applied Gastronomy. If we did nothing but eat, we should accept his suggestion with thanks, but in a land where practical politics is so closely associated with a full dinner pail and a tight waistband, why should we, who are trying to improve practical politics, go lean and hungry and so demonstrate an apparent inferiority to the practicing politician. It is answer enough to this thoughtless critic that in the 22 years of fasting we secured only a very willowy civil service clause in the New Haven charter, while after but five dinners we have succeeded in starching that clause (if one may starch the willow) and in giving the judiciary committee of the legislature some very uncomfortable moments, trying to find the easiest way to set us aside. They did consider it right to dissemble their love, but they did not follow the example of Father William further and proceed to kick us downstairs.

And with our eating we have waxed strong. We have members representing us in a third of the towns in the state and we have found the legislative committee intelligent in our discussions before it. Sooner or later the merit system will be as much a matter of course in Connecticut as the trolley and the automobile.

Last winter by legislative enactment New Haven suc

ceeded in getting away from the futile pass examination and its Charter now provides for the "rule of three." Some of the records of the civil service board were also made public records. This is a very substantial gain, as under a ruling of a former corporation counsel, all of these records belonged to the board and not to the public, so that a glance at them was a favor and not to be presumed upon. Our Association drafted a bill to introduce the merit system into the State charitable institutions with provisions for extension to other state institutions and departments and to cities also. This bill was reported out of Committee with the recommendation that it be continued to the next legislature and this recommendation was adopted by both houses.

In as conservative a state as is the old Nutmeg State, which needs a nut cracker to open the way for a new method of doing business, much seed must be sowed to reap a fair crop. Our agricultural experiment station finds that the electric light and a careful supply of well chosen plant foods increase the apparent fertility of soil. So we have gathered our members under the electric lights, have fed them as properly as we knew how, and have discovered that the seed well sowed, in such a place, has produced far more than that sowed broadcast over all. We do broadcast, too, but our main crop of intelligent, interested citizens has grown up and gained its strength in our forcing beds.

Mr. H. J. Milligan submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Indiana:

Mr. Chairman, it is said "that State is happy whose annals are uninteresting." Applying that maxim, Indiana is a happy state. I am almost sorry to say that I can't report that the law has been outrageously violated in Indiana. It would be interesting. We haven't had any sensations in that respect, and as friends of civil service, we are first truthtellers before anything else, and the truth is, the federal law has been enforced. There is no complaint. To the contrary. We have no state general civil service law, although the state is administered, as I have announced here before, on the merit system. We are not standpatters in Indiana. We have generally

held the Democratic administration as a threat over the people to make the Republicans be good. But at the last election the candidate for governor was Congressman Watson on the Republican ticket-the candidate on the Democratic ticket was an up-country lawyer, Mr. Thomas Marshall-and Mr. Marshall was elected. He was the only Democrat on the ticket who was elected, and the rest of the Republican ticket was elected. It was a wise discrimination. It is true that friends of civil service were somewhat alarmed when Mr. Marshall inadvertently, in one of his campaign speeches, announced that "to the victors belong the spoils"; but since he became governor he has administered the state and the institutions of the state so far, on the merit system. That state is not without hope which will elect a Democratic governor and Republicans on the balance of the ticket, or vice versa, and while it is true that we have no general civil service law in Indiana, I am sure that the principles of the civil service merit system are steadily and surely gaining ground, and that the state institutions are governed on that principle.

I could not exactly "a round, unvarnished tale unfold," but I could tell a very distressing story I think, of municipal conditions, but that is another story. I must say that at some times I have felt that the civil service cause was won; that the great living question now is municipal administration, but on mature reflection, I think it is fair to say that we would not have had the interest in that subject that we have to-day, if it were not for the civil service agitation. We must persevere and keep up this organization and extend its influence, not because it is as interesting as it has been, when we were opposing presidents and were criticising the acts of the administration, but because it is still vitally important that we do so. Now, that the administrations are with us, it might appear to some to be a time of peace, but it's no time of peace. As soon as we relax our energies, I am sure that the forces are organized to take possession of the field again.

Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Maryland:

Mr. President, within the limits of five minutes, I can