The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-10-30
MAILS CAN'T BE USED
For Making Political Assess
mentS on Government
Employees.

washington, Oct. 30.-A long Official
statement reviewing the legal phases
of the political assessment questions,
and holding that the soliciting of cam
paign funds by letter comes clearly
within the remedial provisions of the
civil service law, has been made public
by the civil service commission. The
commission made the statement be-
cause of circulars sent out by w. F.
Burdell as treasurer of the finance
committee of the Ohio Republican state
executive committee, soliciting contri-
buttons from federal employees. The
commission says the Ohio circulars
bring up clearly the question so long
awaiting judicial determination as to
whether soliciting of contributions for
political purposes by means of letters
addressed to federal officers or en-
ployes at their offices constitutes an
offense under the twelfth section of the
civil service law. The commissions
ruling or brief, now made public, was
submitted by President Proctor, of the
commission, to ex-senator George F.
Edmunds, of Vermont, who vase hair
man of the senate judiciary committee
at the time the civil service act was
passed. The latter, in his opinion, to
which the commission gives particular
significance, says:
4 entirely agree with the conclusions
stated in the brief. I think it is clear
that the solicitation of such political
aids by means of the pOstoffice is dis
t1nctly within the prohibition of Sec
ton xii. of the act to which you refer.
The language of the section is. that no
person shall in any room or building
etc, solicit in any manner whatever
etc 1t is not that no person being in
the room or building, shall solicit, but
it is that no SOLICITING SHALL BE
MADE IN ANY SUCH PLACE no
w a lii Too
solicitations may be. If, for instance,
a person on the street outside the treas
ury department should send a written
ofer to some person employed within
the building to pay price for robbing
the vaults or committing any other
wrong, it would be clear that his
ing for the writing of the Of
fer would be entirely incom-
pIete until delivered to the per
son to whom it was addressed. I think
it impossible, therefore, to maintain
that such acts as you refer to are not
within both the letter and spirit of the
act of congress"
After quoting this letter. the COM
mission reviews at length decisions op-
posite to the question under considera-
tion and says that from them the con-
clusfon is unavoidable that ''the writing
and sending through the United States
mails a letter addressed to an officer or
emplOye of the government at his office
asking for q contribution of money for
any political purpose, constitutes a So
Hcitation for money for that purpose
and that since such solicitation has its
full effect only upon the delivery of
such letters to the addressed which
delivery occurs within a government
building it is an act of soliciting
done in government build
ing, and hence comes within the
meaning of the express terms of the
statute. Continuing, the commission
says:
1.-THE intention of congress as
n
civil service act, was to protect federal
employees in the discharge of their Off
cial duties from political assessments
by any one. The mischief to he s11n
pressed was the official and o11asi-
official solicitation of clerks for poIiti-
cal purposes, official when officers used
their stations to intimidate subordi-
mates, quasi-official when outsiders
made use of federal buildings for pUr-
poses demOralizing both to the eff
cheney and discipline of the service.
The statute does not deal with the
mode of soliciting but the fact itself
and it would have been most unusual
if congress had undertaken to specify
the different forms of soliciting IT is
not sufficient for the party manager to
keep from troubling in order to avoid
the legal penalties while at the same
time he commits all the harm which
congress intended to prevent The evil
has been aggravated by the large num-
Der of circulars sent to employees of the
government through the mail that
agency being very convenient one
by which to reach a number of per-
sons That these very circulars were
definitely in the mind of congress as a
main source of evil here sought to be
remedied is clearly inferrable from the
fact that numbers of such circulars
were actually presented and read and
the fact of their being sent through the
mails to persons in the government
employ clearly alluded to during the
debates in the senate prior to the mas
sage OF. the BILL