The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-04-18
OVERTHROW 0F< CIVIL
 SERVICE IN CHICAGO
Safeguards of the Sick Were Scattered to the Winds 2,7OO Patients With But One Trained Nurse-Way to Popularize Public Elf ficiency.

Jane Addams, Headworker Hull House, Chicago.
 Exclusive Service The Survey Press
 Bureau)
 In spite of the enormous headway the civil service has made in America during the last forty years, the sys- tenn of examinations for entrance and promotion in public office has never really captured popular imagination. It has always been associated with a cold and correct morality versus open- hearted kindness. Perhaps it's pro- pagandiStS have over-emphasiZed it's usefulness in keeping the rascals out and thus have allowed it to become stranded in the shallow waters of negative virtue.
 Although it is in connection with humanitarian institutions that civil service has reached its most telling shown that the safeguards which a decade of the merit system have thrown about public care of the sick, the insane, the aged poor, and depen- dent children, may be scattered to the winds in a spirit of Rabelaisian
  the community as a whole. The mere facts that civil service has secured a more efficient administration of public affairs is not of itself a suf- flcient guarantee that will endure.
 A review of the methods of trium- phal destruction pursued by the preS- ident of the Board of County Com missioners, to whom the care of Chi cago's humanitarian institutions was committed, proves this. One of his earliest official acts was to walk portentously into the wards of the public hospitals and to eat of the food which was being served to the patients. When the eggs proved to be "bad 'uns', he was in a state of righteous indignation and dramatical- ly called upon heaven to witness that never again so long as he held office would sick poor of the county suffer such indignities.
 That very large public to whom the compa ssionate and big hearted man .always appeals at once concluded that the new president understood the poor and was serving them with unselfish devotion. The fact that the newly appo'1ted food inspector was Fish of job who had become famous through his venal lack of discrimina- tion in foods, did not apparently reach the public minds, nor did the fact that a new position was illegally made for him, at a salary of $3,00O. dismissed the medical help of the country hospitals for the insane, scat tered the trained nurses who had been in charge of the patients and ruth lessly fired the corps of civil service employees. Of course, incidentally, many partisans were given positions but again the fact that they were un- fitted, that a huge hospital of 2.700 patients was left with only one train ed nurse, did not interest the public. It saw only the fact that kind- hearted man had put in new people to make things better.
 The president of the county board next turned his attention to the ju- 'venile court which affords the best possible field for the operation of be- friending the people, for did it not constantly deal with neglected chi1- dren, with the widows and the fath- erless, whose defense has ever been began a campaign which cleverly combined the vilification of the chief probation officer and pathetic ap- peal on behalf of dependent children. In this he had the support of Hearst daily with its great advantage Of su- preme indifference to accuracy, un- til the stage was at last made ready for the civil service trial of the chief probation officer. This trial was prolonged throughout three months at least, affording an impressive les son to other public servants against
 Many things, however, transpired to dim the final triumph. Perhaps the plan was too long Or the blackness of the william too unrelieved. At any rate the leading men in the center of the stage, the civil service com missioners, grew tired of the part as- signed them and quarrelled with the stage managers. One of the latter who had been promised the place Of chief probation officer with 8 sub stantial increase of salary, suddenly found himself in full view of the au- dience without a makeup and hastily retreated after an incOherent apology. The spot light, awkwardly managed, unexpectedly threw into bold relief, two dependent girls who, although they had been dramatically abducted by night from an industrial school and carefully coached as to their parts. forgot their lines at the crucial mos ment as did other prepared witnesses Before the end of the third month it was clear that the audience had be- come restless and the ruder ones oc casionally guyed the actors. At any rate an unexpected impression finally got over the footlights, that. perhaps after all people who had been trained to care for children, could do it bet ter than the hastily selected appotntees of a kind-h hearted politician.
 The lesson which the friends of civ- il service might long since have learn ed from the petty politician, was thus writ large for all to read; that in some wise or other the beneficient as- poets of the merit system must be made clear. It would be clearly im- possible to destroy the institutions of the people under the guise of be- friending the poor, did the public in the least understand it's beneficience. To have opened a large public hos- pital to the ablest graduates of the medical schools, to have replaced the ward healer who formerly stood guard over the intfmidated insane by train- ed nurses, are results which might we'll claim the gratitude of the ad- niring public in a popular basis. Yet such achieve rents in the end appear colorless, quite as drab and uninter- ly supposed to be.
 The humanitarian institutions of the state afford careers as honorable and absorbing as professorships in a great university or as worthy and solid as officialdom in a great busi- ness house. At present, however, young people are barred from the ser vices of the state unless they acci- dentally become interested in it's hu- ma nitarian institutions. The fact that civil service examinations are to be held is, of course, made public but the date is given with an an- no1ncement as dryly official as pos- sihle Gifted youth at the present