The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-12-18

1ss+ 1eyisJat,1re storpedoed" the civil 1 service law was one of the main themes at the annual dinner or tne
 Connecticut Civil Service Reform as- sociation, held last evening at the
 Hotel Taft The dinner was preceded by the annual business meeting, at
 which Prof. Henry w. Farnam pre- sided, and read the report or the executive committee. It was most 1 exhaustive document dealing with the whole question of the advantages of civil service, the effects of the so called s'torpedoing'' of the law in this state, and the urgency of reconstr ana passing an efdcacious law that would bring all departments of the govern nnent under civil service the vital inn portance of securing efficiency in gov ernment for the safest guarding or our democracy was made an especial
 point ... cant fact that could not be too strongly emphasized, was that the ob-
 jections to the original law had come not from those who had found by eK- perience that it had worked badly. but from those kUhol feared that it would hamper. their actions. On the other hand, those heads Of depart ment who had been able to test the practical working of the law of 1913 were the very ones-who had not
 asked to be exempted. He returned particularly to the insurance commis- sioner, the highway commissioner and the tax commissioner The reap
 pointment of these gentlemen by the governor was, Prof. Farnam said, it. self an application of the merit sys- tenn. A summary of the report is given later.
 Indispensable To Efficiency.
 The whole range of civil Service re- form utility was gone Noyer by the several speakers at the banquet which followed. Some of the speakers, as
 Prof. Farnam did, in his report, asso-
 ciated civil service usefulness with
 spoke Of it as indispensable to efh- ciency in the public service.
 Col. Norris G. Osborn, editor of the Jourhal-Courier, was .toastmaster. and
 the speakers were Hon. John O. Brins-
 made, Mayor sQuigley of New Britain.
 Moscowitz. president of the civil ser vice commission of New York city, and Hon Robert Catherwood of Chi, cago. pr. Moscowitz showed how, by effort, the New York commission had extended the civil service until it had reached some of the highest admin istrative positions in the city. MT. Catherwood told of the results in H. Hliuois, which, he said, extended even
 beyond the merit system until,. by certain methods that had been adopt ed, and which he explained, efficiency
 on the part of public servants was assurance of promotion for those who
 merited it, and almost certain dis
 nissal for the unworthy, the object being to secure such faithfulness of
 public service as might be given by private employer of labor. Mayor
 QuigIey made a short speech, which was well received, telling how he had succeeded in introducing civil service in small way in New Britain, after, considerable effort, and after endur- ing 8 condition of affairs which was anything but satisfactory.
 No Let Up Coming. F !
 Colonel Osborn, in opening the pro- ceedings, remarked that the general assembly had ..torpedoed'' the civil service board and in like manner the weather for thee past few days had torpedoed the matter of attendance at the meeting, for he was sure that were it not for the weather conditions the room would have been filled with en- thusiastie voters of the state. ~Whi1e it is true,'' he said, F'tthat as an asso- citation we are more or less battered and bruised, we are still in the ring and there is no disposition on the part of the Connecticut Civil Service Re- form association to let up one single solitary minute in it's fight to get the law. which was crudely slashed, re- stored to the statute book
 He then called upon MT, Brinsmade, who explained at some length the Suc- cess the commission had in selecting, under civil tsservice rules. a successor to MT. E1WelI, chief engineer of the public, service c6mnission, in the per- son Of John F. Trumbu11, who he had learned on high authority, was giving much satisfaction in his department. MT, Brinsnade said that the work of the Commission from it's very nature must be largely educational, and Sec retary Wright and his assistants were doing valuable work in collecting sta tfstics, classifying employees, etc, and this would be valuable informat ton some day. It seemed to him that the l commission had a chance to show the
 possibility of sivil service work in Connecticut and perhaps might be might properly be asked for at the next session of the legislature.
 <Tne annual report of the association began with a brief review of the Iegis- lative contest which occupied the cen ter of the stage for the first two Iature of 1915, and which ended with i the passage of the act of March 1 amending the civil service law of 1913.
 Regarding this fight the report says, While the attack the merit sys- LeIn came ely rom f1SpupucanS, and while all of the Democrats in both houses voted against the amendment, it would be a mistake to regard the fight as a simple party fight, for two Republicans in the senate and forty three in the house voted against the IsbeII biII so that it would have re- quired a change of but twenty-seven votes in the latter house to turn the minority into a majority, and it was quite evident that time was telling in favor of the merit system. The large amount of insurgency was all the more remarkable and the more creditable to those who voted with the minority from the fact, that those who~lid so we'll understood that no fat offices were in store for them as 8 reward and that their political future was in -ieopardY. Proninant RenuhIicans