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by a special committee in commemoration of Edward O. Graves, Henry C. Lea and Richard Watson Gilder.

Upon motion of Mr. Wilcox, the resolutions were unanimously adopted by a rising vote.'

Reports from Civil Service Reform Associations composing the League and from the Auxiliaries were read:

Mr. Thomas H. Brown submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of New Jersey:

The New Jersey act is practically the same as the New York act and presents no novel features. The one striking feature of it however, is its application to municipalities in that it contains provision for adoption by municipalities by the ordinary form of referendum, also in the extraordinary form of ordinance or by resolution of the governing body. Every municipality that has thus far adopted civil service has obtained it by the latter method.

The following cities and counties of New Jersey are at the present time operating under civil service, to-wit:

Essex County-Hudson County has not as yet adopted civil service-although the Democrats who are the dominant party have been flirting with it. The Democratic board of freeholders has made many promises to adopt it but has always baiked when the show down came.

Newark, Jersey City through the efforts of Hon. H. Otto Wittpen, her mayor, Bayonne, New Brunswick, South Orange and Rahway.

At the present time the very existence of the civil service act in New Jersey is threatened by a case now pending in the New Jersey court of errors and appeals in which case the constitutionality of the act is being challenged. Dame rumor says that the court is split over the civil service act, and that the conferences on the same have been prolonged and unusually spirited. The court completed its calendar for the November term on December 7th, 1909, but no opinion was announced. It was announced that the court would not hold any conferences until January 6th, 1910. In the meantime everything in New Jersey will be held in abeyance, and all friends of civil service must hope for the best.

Printed in full at page 106.

Mr. Albert de Roode submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of New York:

It ill becomes a host to discourse at length upon his own deeds, and the report of the New York Association therefore must be brief. Our work is not as heroic as that of the newer associations, battling for the adoption of the merit system. Our struggle is for improvements in an existing system widely accepted and approved by popular opinion, though none the less vigorously opposed by the politicians. Our message to the newer associations is, that when you secure a civil service law, your work has just begun.

During the last session of the legislature, the Association opposed some 41 bills, of which but one became a law. As usual, there was a proposal to give to Spanish War veterans a preference in appointment. This was defeated. Compared with previous years, the number of bills opposed by the Association was considerably smaller, due, we believe, to a rather clear understanding on the part of the legislators of Governor Hughes' steadfast support of the merit system.

In the service of the city of New York, we have to record several notable improvements-a very considerable reduction in the number of positions exempted from examination, a careful regrading of the city service so as to afford an adequate basis for promotions, and the establishment of a separate promotion bureau, which is doing more in the way of solving the problem of promotions than in any other service, federal, state or municipal.

In the state service, there has also been improvement. The services of seven additional counties have been brought under the jurisdiction of the state commission, some reduction in the exempt class has been made and within the past week transfer tax appraisers in the state comptroller's office have been made competitive, a result for which the Association has long worked. We have reason to expect that further important changes in the same direction are soon to be made in the comptroller's office, as the result of the appointment of Hon. Clark Williams as comptroller. At the request of the Asso

ciation, an investigation was made during last December by the state commission into the administration of the civil service law in the finance department. By this investigation it was clearly disclosed that the higher and more responsible positions, exempted from examination because of this responsibility, were turned over to the Brooklyn Democratic organization as political spoil, and that in one case 150 experts were appointed without examination because of their alleged expert qualifications, while, in fact, most of them possessed no expert qualifications whatever.

The election as borough president of the Borough of Manhattan of Mr. George McAneny, for many years Secretary of the League and of the New York Association, gives promise of a thorough-going application of the Merit System to an office which hitherto has known the Merit System only so far as it was compelled by law. Mr. McAneny's election affords opportunity for a sympathetic test of the applicability of competition to the higher municipal offices.

In the liquidation of the insolvent Binghamton Trust Company by the banking department of this state, over a million and a half dollars were collected in five months at a cost of two-thirds of one per cent. Contrasted with the expense of the former methods of winding up insolvent banks, the result is startling, the cost of liquidating state banks under the other methods ranging from 20 to as high as 90 per cent of the assets collected. The cost of winding up national banks in this state has averaged 8.7 per cent. The entire liquidation of the Binghamton Trust Co. was in charge of a bank examiner appointed through competition. Here is a cogent precedent of the successful selection through competition of a person entrusted with work of the most confidential and responsible nature which should serve effectively to refute the claims for exemptions from examination because of "confidential" duties which are so glibly urged by appointing officers.

Mr. George Burnham, Jr., submitted the report from the Civil Service Reform Association of Pennsylvania:

At annual meetings of the League it has not been infrequent to hear reports from some of its affiliated

associations that their activity had not been great during the year because the efficient work of their civil service commissions had taken from citizen reformers all excuse for meddling. The happy day when such a report can be made from Pennsylvania seems far distant. On the contrary, we are obliged to come before you once more with the plea of the penitent publican.

Our successes of 1906 and 1907 in securing the enactment of new legislation extending the operation of the merit system have not been repeated recently. At the session of the legislature last winter, there was again introduced the state civil service bill that had been prepared by our legislative committee. It provided for a state civil service commission having jurisdiction over State employees, employees in counties having a population of more than 150,000 and of employees in such third class cities as should elect to accept its provisions. The first and second class cities, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton, have been covered by legislation in previous years. This state bill was reported out from the House committee with a favorable recommendation, but never came to a vote on final passage because of the rather unusual rush of business at the close of the session.

If we did not secure new legislation, however, we were most fortunate in the adverse legislation that we managed to escape. Two bills passed the legislature proposing to amend the civil service act for second class cities, one by allowing the exemption of additional stenographers and the other by allowing reinstatements or promotions without examinations of persons who had been for five years in the civil service of any second class city. Both of these were vetoted by Governor Stuart, whose attitude toward the merit system during his whole term of office has been distinctly friendly.

The local situation in Philadelphia has been as unsatisfactory as can well be imagined. Last year at its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the League saw fit to pass a general resolution of condemnation upon the attitude of the mayor of Philadelphia toward the merit system, but we regret to report that the beneficial effect upon his

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conduct has not been at all marked. His casual expressions indicating his attitude toward the administration of the civil service have been as naive as ever in their display of ignorance of and lack of sympathy with any attempts toward its improvement. Some months ago a policeman by the name of O'Keefe wrote a letter to the mayor complaining that an enforced political "contribution" of $15 had been taken from his monthly pay envelope, before it was handed to him at the station house. The mayor's published comment was to this effect:

"That is the kind of a man the police force should be free of. He should, however, not be permitted to resign. He should be fired at once. Such a man would betray police secrets whenever it suited him to do so..

"He is an informer and a squealer and I have no time for men of his class, whether they are policemen or men higher up."

When reports of the thorough-going organization of municipal officeholders for political work were brought to his attention he is quoted as saying, “We are not going to be hypocritical about the Shern Law; we are going to follow the law, but we shall not stretch it."

In spite of the presence on our statute books of the "Shern Law" just referred to, forbidding all kinds of political activity by municipal officeholders in Philadelphia, the election a month ago in that city saw a degree of political activity by the officeholders that was almost without parallel. Policemen and firemen were active about the polls both in uniform and in plain clothes and all other classes of city employes were working as watchers, large numbers of them also being members of party ward committees. Complaints in unprecedented numbers have come to our Association, and our Law Committee has now in preparation cases to test in court the possibility of enforcing the Shern Law by legal proceedings, to put a stop to the control of politics by the officeholding class.

Unfortunately this recent political activity has been shared in to a certain extent by federal employees. This tendency was called to the attention of the United States civil service commission in October, and as a result they

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