The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-12
Reichert, G. A. Hanforth George Mil
Ter, Dr. O. H. Bronson, William Schap-
pa, w. l.. Pierce Willis Noble, Jacob
B. Ullman and A. f. Knapp.
PLANKS FOR POLITICAL PLAT
FORMS.
Continued from the Journal and Cour-
Ter of June 30th.)

Ter of June 30th.)
Art. VI. The principle of civil service
reform should be extended so as to en-
brace every office which does not direct
ly register the public policy of the coun-
| try.
! Explanation: A change in public pol
icy can only embody itself by chanSe
in the personnel that controls the policy
and men directly elected by the people
and entrusted with a mandate of change
should be permitted to appoint their own
| subordinates SO far as it is necessary TO
give free reggie for executing the man
date, but to allow the change to run
through the civil service to letter assort-
ers and street sweepers is to assume
that public policy is directly determined
! by letter asserting and sweeping. All po-
sitions connected with the business and
routine part of government, all secon-
Diary positions that are awarded solely
as patronage, most positions in winch
! frequent change is detrimental and in
private business would be ruinous,
should belong to the classified competi-
tive civil service. Only so can govern
ment get value from experience and
merit get it's reward.
Civil service reform embodes princl-
pie that is intrinsic in advanced democ-
racy, and other governmental institi-
| tutnons which are directly hostile, an
tagonistic and contradictory, must be
excrescences that mark the containing
/ democracy as less advanced, and in such
case the excrescences should be COM
PEELED to yield to progress.
The United States post-office is a bus
| mess institution, a government auXlllary
| to private enterprise, kept a monopoly
only by statute; by this institution sixty
| thousand political bosses are enthroned
in sixty thousand towns and cities over
the country; and how civil service re-
form can expect to live with this every
four years dig at its vitals it is impossi-
| BILE to understand.
| The spells system, backed by the SEN
| timent ITO the victor belong the spoils,
is the antithesis and natural enemy of
civil service reform.
In England the post office has charge
of the transportation of letters, papers
and books, there is packet-post that
takes packages not over six feet long
and not over a certain weight, constitu-
ting feeler for the express business; 1T
has absorbed the telegraph system of the
country and holds whip hand over the
telephone business by a decision of the
courts assimilating telephoning with tel
egraphing; it has large number of pos
tai savings banks and a postal life insu-
rance and annuity department. In
France the post-office is in the library
business as well.
~ he
road system~of the country and our own
state of Illinois has gone into the en-
ployment agency business.
1t is impossible forever to halt some
where short of the logical end Of the
trend, and government once in private
enterprise has but to be logical to en-
brace every scheme Of every crank for
destroying self-determnation and en-
throwning paternalism; but all this en-
largement means bigger field and more
irresistible opening for the spells sys-
TEN.
Men go to ruin along the line Of natu-
raj propensity, in which is situated
stumbling block and weakest link.
Civil service reform is interesting be-
cause of its natural enemy, the spoils
system, which in turn is the stumbling
block and weak link in industrial de-
mocracy.
Capital is the center of gravity of in
dustrialism and it is power par excel
lence in Industrial democracy
If democracy as now understood is to
go to the dogs in the next five hundred
years, here is an epitome of the degene-
ration:
Capital Will be All in All,
Each office-holder will set himself up
as a tin Deity by divine right Of popular
sovereignty, his office a public bust
rather than public trust.
Government will become rich mans
government, with office attainabe only
by men of barrels" and its cuttle-flsh
arms will reach into everything every
where Production and distribution
agriculture, mining, manufacturing ana
meteorological will be combined in one
great trust There will face each other
two great institutions-the government
and organized industry What next?
Will there then be waged a contest that
shall crash to the stars? Not at all.
There will be, instead, the falling into
each Others arms of two dromios-one
labelled government, the other in
dustry." The rich men who control the
industry will be the same rich men who
control the government. The final we'd
ding of government and industry will be
only an official recognition of then
long since understood fact--that govern
nent existed only for corporations and
crporat lions for furnishing sinews of war
for their political tools, the politicians.
Industry well nigh omnipotent already,
will want the government organization
for it's own purposes, will lead up to 1t,
take it, and finally take it officially.
The process will be gradual, each step
entrenched by statutes and court deci-
s;ions, everybody carried along impercep-
tibly and unconsciously, generations
grow llp under bonds which seem natu-
raj and fixed in the nature Of things;
and at last there will arise, in place of
existing democracy, an industrial des-
potism which will laugh to scorn Nero
and the Car of all the Russians. 1t will
be an absolutism and despotism which
in point of strength and cold relentless
Welding of power the world has never
seen Nature will seem to be taking
part and to have become step-mother to
the poor man. When it shall become ne
cessary to remove an Independent among
the ruled, processes will be started so
far fetched that it will be made to APP
near that the undesirable member was
l,..,.,,It o., bIat,,A boT ba had nr4.IlHa /