Evening star., 1896-12-11
What Has Been Done in Reforming
the Civil Service.
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT CARL SCHURZ
SpoiIs Politics Beaten in the Recent
Election.
DANGERS THAT THREATEN

At last nights session of the National
Civil Service Reform League in Philadel-
phia eX-Secretary of the Interior Carl
Schurz. president of the league, delivered
his annual address.
In beginning he referred to the progress
of the movement during the year as fol-
lows:
THE year which has elapsed since our
last annual meeting has been one of ex-
traordinary prosperity to the cause of civil
service reform in various ways The recent
election campaign has served to exhibit in
singularly clear light some of the re-
markable and beneficial changes which the
| merit system has wrought in our political
life, and to expose in their whole futility
many of the fallacies, deceptions and SUI
perstitions which the reform movement
has had, and, in some measure, still has to
overcome.
How persistently have the adherents of
the spoils system been telling us that the
reform of the civil service we proposed
was incompatible with democratic institu-
regular party troops on the spoils basis,
and without the incentive Of the spoils of
office in prospect it would be impossible to
keep alive the popular interest in public
affairs! And how completely and conclu-
sively has since the introduction of the
merit system each successive presidential
election reIuleQ tnat SlanQSr Upon the
character of the American peopIei In no
instance, however, has this refutation been
more striking than it was in the election
just behind us. A campaign more earnest
we have never had. The number OF citi-
zens with whose earnestness the possession
of office or the hope of spoil had anything
to do, was no doubt unprecedentedly small.
But l shall hardly be contradcted when
say that the party most earnest in its work
and most active and enthusiastic in it's ef-
forts was the one which fought without
any prospect of partisan victory and into
whose hopes the winning OF office or other
selfish advantage did not enter in the
slightest degree.
Il am, OF course, very far from asserting
that civil service reform played i'm
portant part in the late campaign as a DO
htical issue. The popular mind alb
sorbed with other things. But l do say
that spoils politics suffered a double defeat
In the election: The party to whose cause
and to whose prospects the spoils idea was
most foreign proved itself in political ac-
ton the most enthusiastic and efficient,
while the party which invoked the spoils
spirit to it's aid, found the promise of
spells utterly impotent to avert its dis
comfitLre.
The Prcsident's Order.
This moral triumph, however is by no
means the only auspicious event upon
which we may congratulate ourselves. The
hope expressed year ago that President
Cleveland would, as to the extension of the
classified service SO far. as 1t could be eff
fected by executive action alone, leave to
his successors but little to do, has been
fully justified. The executive order pro-
mulgated by him on May G. 1885, marks
one of the greatest and most important on
ward strides in the history of the reform
movement. This order added to the classi-
fled service and subjected to the merit sys-
tenn at one stroke of the pen more than 4O,-
900 places, that the number of positions
in the national service placed under the
civil service rules, which was 1900 under
President Arthur twelve years ago, has
now risen to nearly 10000, while the num-
ber of excepted places in the branches of
the service covered Is reduced to less than
500 That order provided for promotion
examinations in all the departments.
Merit System In Cities.
1T is not In the national service alone i
that we find evidence of gratifying pro-
gress. The establishment and maintenance
of the merit system in the various state
and municipal governments is next in inn
portance."