The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-05

| with the only real usefulness of parties & For us they cease to be instruments of any value. Tn teasing to treat them as such instruments we weaken and tic k our hands in the work that we ought as \ citizens to do. If We go beyond this 5 and support any party not for the pub B lie good, but for our own selfish advan- 2 tage at the expense of our fellow-eiti- zens, then we have been false to our trust as free men in sef-governing society
 It is plain, then, that it behooves us : to be careful, ith ourselves, to weigh well the decision we make, to search our hearts that we may be sure of our own motives, and to be respectful and charitable toward those who with equal sincerity follow other decisions.
 So much for the part of the civil ser- vice which depends on elections and is
 determined by party action. Let us look now at the wide and important part of the service with which party has not necessarily anything to do the ser vice of the agents who are appointed by those we elect Of these there are a few, very few, such as the heads of
 departments in the federal government who may well be chosen from the party
 having charge of the government, be- cause they have more or less discretion
 and may help or hinder the policy the | party was intended to carry out. If you hire man to help you in your
 factory, your counting room, your bank
 or your railway, you try to get the best man for the work you want done, and
 he knows that his getting the work, or
 keeping it, or getting promoted depends N on his work. He knows that nothing
 else will count for much, and you know II that when other considerations are a1- lowed to count 1t is likely to be bad for | the business If you were asked to | choose your employees because they be- l longed to your party and because they had done party work, not always the incest, you would laugh the request of 1 scorn and him who made it, If you were unlucky enough to have charge of a business in which places were given in I that way you would find it very hard
 to maintain discipline and industry and | accountability. If it were place of l trust-as all public places are-you
 would feel that the trust could not be
 discharged honestly and fully and in a | businesslil1e manner.
 These facts were long since recog- nized, and a vigorous attempt has been | made in the federal service to shut out politics from the business part of the service by law. The law as it stands was enacted seventeen years ago at the
 session of congress following the assas- sination of President Garfield by greed-crazed place hunter, There has been a good deal of discussion of the subject for number of years General Grant early in his first term had secured the passage of a permissive law and
 had made some experiments with the
 merit system, the results of which were
 excellent but the pressure of the poli- ticians and the spoils-seelkers was too
 strong, and the hero of Fort Donelson, for the first time in his life made an unconditional surrender President Hayes had done excellent work, espec- tally in the department of the interior where MT. Sohurz completely banished
 political influence and made every ap- pointment and promotion under him,
 including his confidential secretary by
 competitive examination. But in con-
 gress and among the active party men
 the new methods were not liked. It was
 only the tremendous wave of horror and
 indignation that swept over the coun-
 try at the murder of the president that
 forced congress to act The law enact
 ed was simple but capable of very wide |
 application. In substance it authorized |
 the president to apply the system of |
 appointments for proved fitness to the |
 entire civil service except the highest |
 and the lowest places that is except |
 the places filled by the consent of the | senate on the one hand and the places l
 of mere laborers on the other hand. | The mode of testing fitness was as far | as practicable to be by competitive ex-
 aminations, open on equal terms to all | applicants In fixing the standing of
 those examined political considera tions | were entirely forbidden. AS rule, en-
 trance to the service was to be in the | lowest grade of each class, and promo ton was to be made only for superior
 fitness as shown by the record of work done and tested by competitive exami-
 nation. Incidentally, the mean and cruel practice of levying assessments on public employees for political pur- poses was, for any one connected with the service, made crime under the law. The law was to be put in operation by means of civil service commission, un- partisan in character. The same kind of law has been enacted in the states of New York and Massachusetts and with partial application in other states It has worked well everywhere in d- rect ratio to the honesty and good faith with which it has been applied and en- forced.
 This is not the place to enter on an in quirY as to how far the law has been SO applied in either the Federal or the state service There has been much op- position to the system, and there have, of course, been some mistakes in ad- it. But up to q very recent date there has been no backward step in regard to the principle of the law It has made possible great improve ments in the way of doing the public , business What has been of still great CT importance, it has taken out of our , politics some of the baser motives for party action. and has left all parties more free and open to the influences of honest conviction. In that direction ;