free from every kind of political, financial or social influence.

Warning, not Threat

Editor, Good Government:

In your issue for August, there is a reference to the "Civil Service Chronicle" in the interesting article on "Labor Unions in the Civil Service" by William Dudley Foulke, that does us injustice. We have no doubt that it is unintentional, but we feel that it should not be allowed to pass uncorrected.

Mr. Foulke states: "In the issue of the Civil Service Chronicle in New York September, 1913, the editor threatens to hand over the votes of 100,000 civil service employes to Tammany Hall in case Mr. Mitchel, the fusion candidate, would not promise to raise salaries and oppose reductions in the city forces."

We never made such a threat. In the first place, we scrupulously avoid advising employes to vote for any particular political party.

In

the second place we would not presume to claim that we possessed such control over the 100,000 New York City employes that we could hand them over to any party.

What we did do was to warn against running on a platform of dismissing employes and cutting salaries. There is a difference between a warning and a threat.

In our opinion, the Government habitually neglects its employes, conceding to them as few rights as possible, raising salaries rarely and penuriously, and generally showing an indifference to their interests. There is no such thing in any City,

State or Federal governmental scheme as a board or committee or department whose duty it is to examine into the welfare of the civil service employes, and frequently efforts at organization within the service are met with repressive action.

Whether or not civil service employes should join labor unions is a most interesting question. Without doubt there are reasons why it would be preferable if they could accomplish their legitimate objects by means of organizations within the service instead of through alliance with organizations without the service which frequently have little in common with them. For example, we understand that policemen are not welcome in the American Federation of Labor. If other civil service employes are welcome we do not see why a policeman should not be equally welcome.

Our position may be summed up as follows: It is our belief that

civil service employes would have no tendency to affiliate with labor unions if they felt that they could receive proper consideration of their grievances without such resort, and those who are opposed to civil service employes joining labor unions would perform a useful work if they would advocate that the Government give to its employes the attention to which they are entitled.

In order to bring this about this newspaper sometimes warns, but it has no policy of threatening.

Very truly,

CIVIL SERVICE CHRONICLE, SOLOMON HECHT, Editor.

tions of subordinate census and other officials having to do with statistics. Gen. Francis A. Walker declared in 1893: "I do not know of any man now holding, or who has ever held, a position in this country as the head of a statistical bureau, or as chief of a statistical service, or as a statistician, who had any elementary training for his work." But the action of the House in passing a bill for the regular decennial enlargement of the Census Bureau to take the census of 1920, without embodying in it any recognition of civil-service principles, fairly invites the rebuke which the National Civil Service Reform League administers. Nine years ago President Roosevelt vetoed a similar measure because of a similar fault. We shall need a hundred thousand special workers for the gigantic task of the next census, and safeguards should be thrown about the manner of choosing this army of national employees. There should be no political patronage about the business, and there ought to be guarantees that real qualifications will be insisted upon in the more important appointments.

A Resourceful Senator

N

(The Nation's Business)

OT so very long ago a man who

wanted to move to Washington asked his Senator to get him a "nice dacent" Government position. Salary, $2000. Working hours, not to exceed two a day. The applicant must have the rest of the time to establish himself in private business. While he was waiting, suitcase packed, for a telegram saying "come," he received a letter expressing the Senator's deep chagrin at the oversight of the Government in not providing such berths. By the same mail arrived, with the Senator's compliments, a Government monograph on animal parasites.

GENERAL LIBRARY

OCT 118

UNIV. OF MICH.

extend their powers. The Bureau of Efficiency, that curious anomaly, can be made an effective instrument, once it is restored to its former status as an adjunct of the Civil Service Commission and is given the Commission's authority. The civilian recruiting agencies of the various departments can be combined. Rules governing employment, rules with teeth, can be promulgated. The "exempt" departments can be brought back to reason under a scientific system. All these things can be done under existing law, and, we venture, will be done if Mr. Baruch insists.

T WAS gratifying to find that in

Ispite of the war the press and

people of the country could find time to rise up in indignant protest against the spoils census bill. The League led the way in its appearance before the Senate Census Committee, and the press joined in the chorus with a strong and unani

mous voice. Business men in all parts of the country have written to the League endorsing its position. Not since the fight in 1916 against the secrecy of the Civil Service Commission's records of fourth-class postmaster tests has the public taken so lively an interest in civil service reform. This is ascribable partly to the fact that the census is a government function that comes home to every fireside in the land, but there is also a growing realization that patronage is an enemy of efficiency, and inefficiency cannot be tolerated in war times. The President's "adjournment of politics" was used with good effect in the League's argument and made a strong appeal to the press.

E HAVE increasing testimony that the civil service employes, in Federal and local services, are adopting a friendlier attitude toward the League and its purposes and methods. In the past they have sensed an "intellectual aloofness" on our part, and have resented our non-interference in salary disputes. It is perhaps impossible wholly to eliminate such misunderstandings, but we believe they are appreciating more and more that the League cannot enter into questions of salary without first of all a standardization of duties. At present nearly all the salary questions which the employes raise through their organizations are purely casual. One group of employes asks this, another group that. The League cannot treat these questions as unrelated. But this does not gainsay that there are ample opportunities for cooperation between the League

and those groups of employes who are whole-heartedly in favor of scientifically regulated employ

ment. As the employes realize that the merit system and their interests are one and indivisible, and that the League therefore stands for one as much as the other, occasions for ill feeling will be few.

A

CASE in point is retirement. The League stands squarely as it has stood for many years for a retirement system based on contributions from the employe's salary. Some of the employes imagine that this is inimical to their interests. They want a straight pension plan, but will compromise on a half-andhalf arrangement. They think that the League's opposition to pensions and compromises indicates lack of sympathy with the underpaid employe. But the trouble is the employes have not reasoned their own case. If they did, they would appreciate the evils which any form of pension has in store for them. Again we say to the employes that their interest is similar to the public interest, and that in making its fight on behalf of the public the League is League is serving the employes also. Just how a straight contributory plan favors the employe, and how a pension system hurts him, was shown in our issue of last March. Of course, the League realizes that the Treasury must pay for superannuation already earned, or partly earned, but would apply the contributory plan to all future entrants into the service. This gives those now on the payrolls the assurance of adequate retirement allowances without excessive contributions.

"Who is Davis?"

TH

HE appointment of Solicitor General John W. Davis as ambassador to London is a telling argument in favor of competitive selection of ambassadors, because it illustrates the fatuity of the argument that the President must be free to select a man of worldwide renown. If ever such a man were needed, surely it was on this occasion. The American public seemed to expect the selection of an American Balfour or Reading; instead, Mr. Wilson chose to appoint an able advocate wholly unknown not only in London, but even in non-official America.

If President Eliot had been selected, though he declined the post once before in less troublous times, the American and British nations would have experienced the thrill that they were waiting for. Colonel House, despite his aversion to fixed posts and official status, could hardly have declined the appointment, and probably no other name would

symbolize so adequately the immense good will of America to her allies. But the President chose simply a man who was well equipped by training and temperament to transact the affairs of the embassy, and ignored the correlative benefits that would derive from a more popular selection.

The point is this: If President Wilson, in the midst of a war, at a time when of all times a graceful gesture toward the British public would be appropriate, selects his Ambassador to Great Britain purely on grounds of technical ability, what are the occasions for which unhampered freedom of selection must be reserved? In other words, does anyone suppose that a selection equally good, or better, would not have resulted from an impartial weighing of the available material by an expert and non-political agency?

If in times like these we can dispense with the publicity value of such names as Choate, why not appoint a career man?

R

EPORTS recently received by the League from the executive departments in Washington indicate that deferred classification under the draft act, amounting to exemption from military service, has been obtained for probably 5,000 departmental employes. This

exemption was obtained on the certificate of the department head that the employes so affected were indispensable to the service.

The searchlights of Congress have been turned on this matter, and there has been some bitter debate about it. Sweeping charges