seems to be winning its way in the Department. The number of competitors who present themselves is usually large enough to make the competition a real one, and includes the better portion of those who are eligible to compete. It is believed that as the system progresses the acquiescence in it will become general, and that the better sentiment of the Department will be averse to a return to the old method.

It only remains now to speak of the results of the examinations for admission to the service. It was at this point that the advocates of the reform looked for the most beneficial results, and the Board is happy to be able to report that the system has justified the reasonable expectations of its friends. In the opinion of most of the officers of the Department who have had opportunities for comparing them, the persons who have entered the service under the rules are greatly superior in both capacity and efficiency to the average of those who entered it under the former system. Sixty-one persons have been admitted to the Department under the Civil Service rules, of whom fifty-eight now remain in the service, and, with this report in view, the Board has made inquiry of the heads of the offices to which they have been assigned, in regard to their industry and capacity. The heads of offices were requested to designate each of the new appointees as either "very superior," "excellent," "good," "fair," or "poor," and in case any doubt existed as to the class to which he should be assigned, to assign him to the lower. The result was that three persons were described as "very superior;" twenty-two as "excellent;" twenty-seven as "good;" six as "fair," and not one as "poor." In many cases persons were designated as "good," simply because of their newness in the office, though the belief was expressed that they would become excellent or even very superior clerks as soon as they had gained the requisite experience. Of those described as "fair," it is probable that the greater number will leave the service at the expiration of their terms of probation, if the judgment of the Board confirms that of their immediate superiors, so that they cannot properly be charged to the system. The general result of the inquiry is extremely gratifying. It is certain that so favorable a report could not have been made concerning any equal number of persons consecutively appointed under the former system. Notwithstanding unauthorized and biased reports of the failure of the system in this regard, the Board has no hesitation in saying that, on the whole, it has secured a much higher order of capacity than has lately entered the Department, and has been sufficiently successful to prove its utility and to justify its continuance.

Another good result of the reform is the entire cessation of office

seeking, in the ordinary sense of the term. Although, as elsewhere mentioned, the members of the Board have been subjected to the importunities of persons desiring to be summoned for examination, the old-fashioned strife for place, so far as the offices to which the rules apply are concerned, has almost entirely ceased. Persons wishing to enter the service have generally recognized the powerlessness of political or personal "influence," and have confined their efforts to the methods pointed out by the Civil Service rules.

The examinations have had an excellent incidental effect upon both those wishing to enter the Department and aspirants for promotion, by inciting them to study and self-improvement. This effect is especially noticeable within the Department. Many of those whose schooling has been slight are striving to make up their deficiencies, while others who have been more fortunate are refreshing their learning or increasing its extent. Nor is this effect confined to aspirants for promotion. The questions put in the examinations, especially those which relate to the business of the Department, often become the subjects of conversation and discussion among those not seeking for promotion, and doubtless lead in some cases to profitable study. This result is gratifying, not only because it stirs clerks from the mental lethargy into which they are apt to fall, and leads to habits of self-improvement, but because it cannot fail in the end to make them better qualified for the discharge of their duties.

A very important result of the system of open competition has been a marked diminution in the number of appointments. During the nine months that the rules have been in operation only sixty-one first-class clerks have been appointed, while not a single appointment has been made to the $900 class of female clerks. As fifteen of the women appointed to clerkships of class one were already employed in the Department at $900 a year, the net addition to the clerical force of the Department has been but forty-six persons. This increase has been more than offset by resignations, deaths, and dismissals, and is much smaller than usual. It is safe to say that the saving in salaries alone, resulting from the operation of the rules, would be more than sufficient to pay the expense of the application of the system to every branch of the service, to say nothing of the saving due to the prevention of the appointment of worthless persons.

The reason of the diminution in the number of appointments is obvious. Formerly there was a constant effort to make places for persons whose appointment was desired for political or personal reasons, and there is little doubt that public officers were thus induced

often doubtless unconsciously, to magnify the needs of their offices. Now that merit alone can insure success, this kind of pressure has ceased, and the officers of the Department ask for the appointment of new clerks only when there is real need of their services.

Notwithstanding the marked success of the system of competitive examinations as compared with the former mode of appointment, it must be admitted that the character of the applicants for admission to the service has not been so high as the Board expected it would be. It was hoped, despite the lowness of the salaries, that the prospect of promotion offered to meritorious persons by the rules, and of a tenure of office more permanent than heretofore, combined with the comparative ease of the Government service, and the advantages of Washington as a place of residence, would induce men of a high order of business or professional talent to seek admission to the service. While not qualifying what has been said concerning the capacity of those who have been appointed under the rules, it must be admitted that this hope has in some measure failed of fulfilment.

Doubtless too much was expected, yet the conviction remains, that Civil Service reform has in this respect failed to secure that complete measure of success for which some of its most sanguine advocates hoped. The reasons for this are various, and among the most prominent, aside from the important consideration that the rules have not been in operation long enough to give them a complete and impartial trial, may be mentioned: First, the opinion which extensively prevails that the system is not being carried out in good faith; second, the belief of many that the examinations are purely scholastic, so that practical men would have but little chance of success in competition with schoolmen; third, the fact that the positions open to competition offer such meagre salaries and such small chance of advancement, that they are not worth seeking by persons of the highest order of ability, who can ordinarily secure better compensation in private employments; and fourth, the popular and by no means unjust feeling that no credit attaches to the ordinary places in the Civil Service, arising out of the well-known mediocrity of the mass of civil servants, and the indifference of Congress toward its improvement.

The opinion has obtained a strong hold upon the public mind that the Civil Service is a mere treadmill of routine duties, requiring but little capacity, and tending, by its want of variety, to dwarf even that little. That the Civil Service is fertile in illustrations of this tendency, cannot be denied, though their numbers are gradually diminishing. But the true inference to be drawn from this is not against, but entirely in favor of

Civil Service reform. The very men who are pointed out as illustrations of the dwarfing tendency of Civil Service employment, when their histories are scrutinized, are found to be in it simply from the fact that their fitness to enter was not tested in the beginning. In their best days, the majority of these "illustrations" would have failed to reach the minimum standard, either from want of education and training, or from a lack of natural capacity. Those who had the capacity are found to have improved very greatly, and many of the best of the older employés are men who have been educated since they entered the service, and at the expense of the Government.

An impartial examination into the business of the civil departments of the Government will show that there are very few business employments in private life offering a greater variety of duties, or affording a better field for the useful display of originality and training, than the business of most of the Executive Departments, when that business is well and properly done. There is scarcely a business or profession pursued by man that does not find a constant use in the every-day operations of the service, and but a very small portion of the places are in fact purely routine in their character. It is not uncommon to find the most important interests intrusted to clerks of even the lowest grades, who are called upon to decide questions involving grave points of law or business practice, and an error in whose judgment would subject the Government to great loss. It is absurd to class persons charged with such responsibility—and their cases are not exceptional-with dry goods clerks or even ordinary accountants, and yet the salaries would indicate that they were ranked but little higher. Few persons understand the importance of the interests or the intricacy of the business intrusted to clerks in the public departments. Even were the duties exacted merely routine, ordinary prudence would dictate that the great interests at stake should be protected by liberal pay. There are scores of clerks in the Treasury Department, the ignorance or carelessness of any one of whom, in the discharge of his duties, would subject the Government to annual loss amounting to ten times his salary. The transactions of the Government so far exceed those of private business, that no just comparison can be made between them, nor can any conclusion be drawn from the ordinary salaries of clerks in private employ as to the compensation justly due to servants of the Government. It is not economy, but the sheerest folly, to endanger such interests by inadequate pay.

Much of the Government business is badly done, not because it cannot, with efficient and competent men, be well done, but be

cause many of the employés have no ambition to be thorough; and from the constant neglect of Congress to provide by adequate salaries a means of compensating the industrious clerks, some of the best have come to be careless and negligent. Many instances can be mentioned of men who came into the Department full of ambition to do their duty, but who, after a few years of trial, have become disheartened by their limited prospects, and have fallen into the general opinion of the older ones, that the true equivalent of poor pay is poor work. The consequences of this prevailing sentiment do not tell against the Government as they would against a private business. The Government has no capital to be impaired by bad management, and the failure of its individual employés to do their whole duty does not fully appear in its profit and loss account, or affect its dividends. It is entirely safe to venture the assertion that no private business under the sun could avoid ruin for a single year if it were conducted upon the same basis as is the public business of the Government in some of its details. The natural remedy would seem to be to secure a more competent class of men, and this can be done only by offering them adequate salaries for their entire time, and encouraging a feeling of pride in the service of which they are members. In the opinion of this Board, no measure of reform will reach the evil, or secure the remedy, which does not insure fair compensation, reasonable permanency, and a provision for old age.

It is believed that all who have thoughtfully considered the subject will concede that this would bring forward a better class of applicants, and in the end give to the service those qualities which it now so sadly needs, talent and enthusiasm.

There is no reason in the nature of things why the service of the Government should not be considered as honorable as any private em ployment. The truth is, that the only reasons which have subjected the public service to contempt are the vicious mode of appointment and removal formerly in force, and the lowness of salaries. The latter secured but an inferior class of applicants, while the former rarely chose the best of that class, or, having chosen, did not permit them to remain long enough to make their talents of service to the Government. Moreover those who entered the service in times past did so with the conviction that, no matter how careless or negligent they might be, their tenure of office was secure while their party remained in power, while, no matter how faithful, industrious, or capable they were, they could not expect to hold their places for a longer term. Under such conditions, it was not to be expected that men would be devoted or enthusiastic, industrious or faithful, much less that they would undertake to