The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-06

side politicians really make the ap- pOintments nominally made by the ex- ecutive officers, the appointees being chosen by the politicians in question, in the great majority of cases, for req sens totally uneonnected with the needs of the service or of the public.
 Statistics gathered by the Census Bureau show that the tenure of office . in the Government service does not diff fer materially from that enjoyed by employees of large business corpora ] tions. Heads of executive departments and members of the Commission have called my attention to the fact that the i rule requiring a filing of charges and three days notice before an employee could be separated from the service for inefficiercy has served no good purpose ] whatever, because that is not a matter upon which a hearing of the employee found to be inefficient can be of any . value, and in practice the rule provid- ing for such notice and hearing has merely resulted in keeping in certain number of 1ncompetents, because of the reluctance of heads of departments and bureau chiefs to go through the re- qulred procedure. Experience has shown that this rule is wholly ineffec- tive to save any man, if a superior for improper reasons wishes to remove him, and is mischievous because it sometimes serves to keep in the ser vice incompetent men not guilty of specific wronk doing. Having these facts in view, the rule has been amend ed by providing that where the inefffcl- eEcy or incapacity comes within the personal knowledge of the head of a department the removal may be a rec ord of the department. The absolute right of removal rests where it always has rested, with the head of g. depart. ment; any limitation of this absolute right results III grave injury to the public service. The change is merely one of procedure; it was much needed; and 1t is producing good results.
 The civil service law is being ener- getically and impartially enforoced. and in the large majority of cases com plalnts of violations of either the law or rules are discovered to be unfound- ed. In this respect, this law compares very favorably with any other Federal statute The question of politics in the appointment and retention of the men engaged in merely ministerial work has been practically eliminated in almost the entire field of Government employ. ment covered by the civil service law. The action of the congress in providing the Commission with its own force in- stead of requiring it to rely on detailed clerks has been justified by the in- creased work done at smaller cost to the Government urge upon the Con- gress a careful consideration of the recommendations contained in the an- nual report of the Commission.
 Copyright Laws.
 Our copyright laws urgently need re- vision. They are imperfect in defini- 1 tion, confused and inconsistent in ex- pression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern re- productive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to the fair protection of the public; they are difficult for the courts tointerpret and impossible for the copy right coffee to administer with satis- faction to the public. Attempts to inn prove them by amendment have been frequent, no less than twelve acts for the purpose having been passed since the Revised Statutes. To perfect them by further amendment seems impracti- cable. A complete revision of them is esential. Such revision, to meet mod ern conditions, has been found neces- sary in Germany, Austria, Sweden and other foreign countries, and bills em- 1 bodying it are pending in England and the Australian colonies. It has been