The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-06
Roosevelt Sends Special Mes-
 sage to Congress :.
SPOILS SYSTEM CONDEMNED
President Wants Those Who Take the Census to Be Appointed Under Civil Service Rules and Not
 By the Old Method.

W dSlilBlOHt AhC CNh VI fects of the spells system and of the custom of treating appointments to the public service as personal perqusites of professional politicians are peculiarly evil dent in the case of great public work like the taking of the census, a work which should emphatfcally be done for the whole people, and with an eye single to their interest"
 In these words President Roosevelt to- day summed up a message to the house of representatives, returning without his approval, the bill providing for the talk ing of the next census because of the provision prescribing that appointments shall be made on the basis of non-com- petitive examinations, instead of through the civil service commission. As passed by Congress the bill permitted represen- tatives and senators to designate persons for service after they had undergone a simple examination.
 Roosevelt's Message. The message is as follows:
 q herewith return, without approval, H. R. 16,954, entitled, An Act to Provide for the Thirteenth and Subsequent Decen- nial Censuses.' do this with extreme re- luctance, because I fully realize the im- portance of supplying the director of the census at as early date as possible with the force to carry on his work. But it is of high consequence to the country that the statistical work of the census shall be conducted with entire accuracy. This is as important from the standpoint of business and industry as from the scien- tific standpoint. It Is therefore in my judgment, essential that the result should not be open to the suspicion of bias on | political and personal grounds; that 1t should not be open to the reasonable suspicion being a waste of the peo- ples money and a fraud.
 Section of the act provides in eff feet that appointments to the census shall be under the spoils system, for this Is l the real meaning of the provision that 1 they shall be subject only to non-com- petitive examination. The proviso is add ed that they shall be selected without regard to political party affiliations. But there is only one way to guarantee that they shall be selected without regard to politics and on merit, and that is by
 
 gibles provided by the civil service com mission.
 Examination of Applicants.
 ''To provide that the clerks and other employees shall be appointed after non competitive examination and yet to pro- vide that they shall be selected without regard to political party affiliations, | means merely that the appointments shall be treated as the perquisites of the politicians of both parties instead of as the perquiSites of the politicians of one party. 1 do not believe in the doctrine that to the victor belong the spells; but I think even less of the doctrine that the spells shall be divided without a fight by the professional politicians on both sdes and this would be the result of permitting the bill in its present shape to become a law. Both of the last cen suses, the eleventh and the twelfth, were taken under the provision of law excluding competition; that is, necessi- tating the appointments being made un- der the spells system. Every man com potent to speak with authority because of his knowledge of and familiarity with the work of those censuses has stated that the result was to produce extrava- gance and demoralization."
 The President then quotes examples of the striking inefficency of some of those tIiiplOy Cu III teihii6 tiic tciiooo OA 10vV and adds:
 MT. Carroll D. Wright, who had charge of the census bureau after the census of 1S90 estimates that $2,000,0J0 and more than a years time would have been saved if the census force had been brought into the classified service
 Destruction of Economy.
 ''This of course meant the destruction of economy anu efficiency for purely po- litical considerations.
 Tn view of the temporary character of the work 1t would be well to waive the requirements of the civil service law as regards geogra phical apportionments, but the appointees should be chosen by competitive examination from the lists provided by the civil service commission. The non-competitive examination In a case like this is not only vicious but is in effect a fraud upon the public.
 q also recommend that if provision is made that the census printing work may be done outside the government printing office 1t shall be explicitly provided that the government authorities shall see that the eight-hour law is applied in effective fashion to these outside offices.
 "Outside of these matters I believe that the bill is on the whole satisfactory and represents an improvement upon pre- vious legislation on the subject. But it is of vital consequence' that we should not once again permit the usefulness of this great decennial undertaking on behalf of the whole people to be marred by permitting 1t to be turned into an engine to further the self-interest of that small section of the people which makes a profession of politics.
 The reference of the President to the division of the spells" without a fight by the professional politicians on both sides provoked general laughter. After providing for reprint of the census bill as 1t passed the House, the House ad- journed thus postponing action on the message.