The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-07-30
Civil Service Reform.

In issuing an order to the effect that
no removal from any position subject
to competitive examination within the
classified civil service. shall be made
except for Just cause and upon written
charges filed with the head of the de-
partment or other appointing officer,
of which charge the accused must have
full notice with an opportunity to
make defense, President Mckinley has
corrected the very evil which has
heretofore tended to make hypocritical
the entire civil service system. The
previous absence or virtual neglect of
such a rule has so facilitated evasions
of the spirit of civil service reform as
to bring the whole thing into more or
less contempt. A strict enforcement
of the new order will not only lift
from the shoulders of federal officials
in responsible position load of press
ure hitherto brought to bear by clam
orers for office, thus giving them added
time to devote to their more import
ant duties, but it will also establish
merit and merit alone as the deter
mining factor in the equation Of public
service, and insure that public money
paid in the form of salaries to ems
ployes in that service shall go to COM
pensate actual and efficient work.
The American people are ready to
subscribe most heartily to genuine civil
service reform, but they would sooner
a thousand times over have back the
old-fashioned spoils system, naked and
unadorned, than a mongrel humbug
system which, while wearing the
gaudy plumage of reform" is intrin-
sically rank and foul. No man has
yet advanced tenable reason why
the dollar of government money used
to pay salaries in the government SER
vice should not hire precisely as cap
able and efficient work as the dollar
of private money paid in a private
shop, factory or store, and on precisely
the same conditions. But there are
ample reasons why the livery of civil
service reform should not be worn
simply to hide the defects of the spoils
system carried to it's worst phases in
the confidence that the average citi-
zen will not "catch on" No meaner
prostitution of a virtuous principle was
ever practiced than when President
Cleveland first filled the unclassifled
offices full of favoritc henchmen and
then threw over them the mantle of
an executive order; nor has dupliCity
scored a more contemplate triumph
than when examiners supposed to con-
duct the competitive tests Of appli-
cants for a civil service rating surren-
dered their functions to the depart
ment boss and blindly approved the
ratings he chose.
The Republican party is pledged to
stand by civil service reform, and that
means the real thing. President Nc
Kinley, as a man Of his word, is
honestly trying to carry out that
pledge, in which effort he will have
the public's support. If from the
Whited seDulcher that Grover Cleye-
land left behind him as an earnest of
his sincerity as a civil service reformer
the screened stencil and whtewashed
foulness can be expelled and the place
made fit for honorable abode, well and
good, and great will be the eclat to the
man and the party accomplishing the
cleansing. Otherwise, the alternative
Will be to tear the whole thing open
and let in the light.
In Governor Hastings opinion the