The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1910-12-23
PREDICTS APPLICATION OF
CIVIL SERVICE MEASURES
BY Associated Press.

baltimore, Md, Dec. 10. - Political
lawyers in the government service are
largely responsible for the popular inn
Ipression that it is next to impossible
to put rich criminal in JAIL declared
Assistant Attorney General W. T. Den
ison in an address here today before
the National Civil Service Reform as
Isociation.
Predicting that civil service prin-
ciples ultimately would be applied to
all legal positions in the government
service, with the possible exception
of attorney general and solicitor gen
eral, Mr.. Denison declared the break
down of the criminal law was due
largely to political appointments in
legal positions ecause they prevent the
people from getting their moneys
worth ibn ability and services.
"A law officer of the government,
and especially a criminal prosecutor
Iought not to know a republican from
democrat" said Mr.. Denison.
President Taft and Attorney General
Wickersham had eliminated political
considerations from all appointments
under attorney general, except in
few isolated cases, he continued, and
as the result of his experience in the
prosecuting branch of the government,
he said he had come to believe that
all assistant attorney generals and all
United States attorneys could best be
selected by promotion on a competi-
tive basis and all positions below as
sistant district attorney by competi-
tive oral and other examination,
practice which had been used by
Henry L. Stimson, when the latter was
United States district attorney in New
York.
Mr.. Denison said that Mr.. Stimsons
prosecutions of rebates, sugar frauds
and bank wreckers never could have
succeeded if he had made appoint
ments in his Office in accordance with
the demands of politicians. The New
York politicians, he said, had even pro-
tested to Attorney General Bonaparte
that Stimson was requiring too much
public work from his assistants, which
had the effect of causing them to ne
glect legal work for the republican or
ganization of New York, which they
wanted done at public expense.
"Stimson's method was strongly op-
posed not only by the ordinary type
of politician" declared Mr.. Denison,
but by certain very enlightened and
genuinely public spirited leaders who
were of opinion that Mr.. Stimson was
lin error politically in adopting it.
1T came down, then, to the real OBJ
jection-a direct bald question of dol
lars and cents. The party managers
said in effect: The party has to have
a certain amount of legal work done,
some of it for poor members of the
party who need to be kept in line by
some sort of charity, and some of it
for direct organization legal work in
connection with watching elections,
advising as to rights of voters, etc.
This legal work being necessary, how,
they said, can we get men to do it?
Would anybody do it without com
Ipensation? We must then either pay
them from our own private money, or
we must pay them through preference
in appointments, at good salaries-in
other words, through the public purse
81 agree fully that this point of view
S shocking to the moral sense Of at
least, the average man, though I rec
|ognize that in particular cases it does
mot seem immoral to many men of
genuinely high moral character
confess that l have not the acuteness
of moral vision that can preceive its
Essential distinction from ordinary en-
bezzlement.
"All this is aside from another fund
amental evil of the spoils system,
which is a nevil common indeed to the
application Of that system in all kinds
of appointments, but perhaps in the
largest degree evidenced in regard to
legal positions The terms of public
office are very short in this country,
the law is very long; and the two do
not fit. Under our defective and alb
surd legal procedure, the laws delays
are so great that a hard-fought legal
campaign against experienced and
high-paid counsel can not be carried
through to final elimination within the
limits of the term of office; and
change in the Office following a party
change in fatal swapping of horses.
I'VE all know how bitter has been
the feeling among the poor concerning
the ineffectiYeness as against rich and
powerful criminals of the administra-
tion of our criminal laws; we all know