The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1899-07-28
A. CIvIL-SERVICE WARNING.
Abuses of The System-Often Detriment-
al to the Good of the Service System
with Power of Removal needed.

al to the Good Of the Service System
with Power of Removal needed.
The following summary of one of
the fatal defects of the civil service law
as it now stands recently appeared in
the columns of the New York corespon-
dence of the Chicago Inter Ocean.
Business like people who have favored
the extension of the civil service rules
as now in existence on the ground that
it is unbusiness-like to discharge tried
employees and hire new ones will find
point in it which they have overlook
ed. They must concede that it is not
business like to keep an employe who
though perhaps not guilty of crime is
found on trial to be unfit for the work
for reasons of disposition, character, or
intellect yet under present rules the
government must keep such man even
to the great detriment of the service.
''The National Civil.Service league
has, some of the best friends of the
civil service in this city believe, done
more to create reactionary feeling
with regard to civil service than all
that has been done by professional
politicians in the past four or five years
has been able to do. The feeling is
growing that the greatest danger to a
true and satisfactory civil service
comes now, not from the politicians,
but from the extremists, who claim to
be the truest and best civilservice re-
formers. We have received an object
lesson though the experience of the
postmaster of city not far from New
York, this postmaster himself having
been one of the most conspicuous of
civil.service reformers, and a member
of his state civil-service board. A few
days ago this postmaster learned that
some one in the Office was a thief. A
watch was set, and on Friday afternoon
the thief was caught with the stolen
money on his person.
1t so happened that this employe had
been unsatisfactory to the postmaster
for long time. He tried to discharge
him last winter, and found himself
blocked by the civil-service law. That
effort to discharge this employe is on
record, and the postmaster points to it
in vindcation of his Judgment and
believes that it removes the reproach
which otherwise would be upon him
for this scandal. That is not the only
thought that he has in connection with
this experience. In letter received
from him recently, he says:
1T has gotten to be fact that you
can't remove an employe now unless
you convict him of a crime or prove
something very serious against him.
The civil service system is now carried
with altogether too high hand by the
federal commission, and l want TO saw
toyou what is an open secret, that the
departments are all afraid of it. | find
men who are ardent civil-service re-
formers who are getting little cool
toward civil service that tends toward
making life tenures in public positions.
When examinations have provided fit
men for appointments, don't believe
in making it impossible to weed out
those who, after practical trial, are
found unfit by disposition or intellect
or character for their places. Now, I
want to say another thing, and we
shall all find it out sooner or later,
under the present system let me tell
you the civil service is becoming one of
the biggest trade unions in the United
States
Now, that letter is from man whose
record as civil.serve ce reformer. both
in theory and in official experience. is
as good as that of any man who has
gained national prominence for his
services in behalf of a responsible civil
service. He will probably be maligned
by the members of the civil-service
league.
The first officer of this government to
adopt civil-service rules was General
James, when postmaster in this city.
He did that some years before the
national civil-service law was passed.
He says that there has been, and can
be, no Improvement on the civil-service
system that Dorman B. Eaton favored
and George William Curtis supported,
and that system gave to the responsible
heads of departments, or officers like
postmasters, the power of absolute re-
moval, a power that Curtis himself
said could not be seriously misused If
the power of appointment depended
upon the faithful observance of civil.
service qualifications-namely, merit
and fitness and General James is not /!
the only one of the true civil.service |
'eformers who fear that the excessive !