It appears that in the War Department the employes were divided on the 19th day of November 1884, into eight classes and sub-classes, embracing those earning annual salaries from $900 to $2,000.

The Navy Department was classified November, 22, 1884, and its employes were divided into seven classes and sub classes, embracing those who received annual salaries from $720 to $1.800.

In the Interior Department the classification was made on the 6th day of December, 1884. It consists of eight classes and sub-classes, and embraces employes receiving annual salaries from $720 to $2,000.

On the second day of January, 1885, a classification of the employes in the Treasury Department was made, consisting of six classes and sub-classes, including those earning annual salaries from $900 to $1,800.

In the Postoffice Department the employes were classified on February, 6, 1885, into nine classes and sub-classes, embracing persons earning annual salaries from $720 to $2,000.

On the 12th of December, 1884, the Bureau of Agriculture was classified in a manner different from all the other departments, and presenting features peculiar to itself.

It seems that the only classification in the Department of State and the Department of Justice is that provided for by Section 163 of the Revised Statutes, which directs that the employes in the several departments shall be divided into four classes. It appears that no more definite classification has been made in these departments.

I wish the Commission would revise these classifications and submit to me a plan which will as far as possible make them uniform, and which will especially remedy the present condition which permits persons to enter a grade in the service in the one department without any examination, which in another department can only be entered after passing such examination. This, I think, should be done by extending the limits of the classified service rather than by contracting them. GROVER CLEVELAND.

XII.

SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES PRESENTED.

To the Congress of the United States:

Pursuant to the second section of chapter 27 of the laws of 1833, entitled "An act to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States," I herewith transmit the fourth report of the United States Civil Service Commission, covering the period between the 16th day of January, 1886, and the 1st day of July, 1887.

While this report has especial reference to the operations of the commission during the period above mentioned, it contains, with its acompanying appendices, much valuable information concerning the inception of civil service reform and its growth and progress, which can not fail to be interesting and instructive to all who desire improvement in administrative methods.

During the time covered by the report 15,852 persons were examined for admission in the classified civil service of the Government in all its branches, of whom 10,746 passed the examination and 5,106 failed. Of those who passed the

examination, 2,977 were applicants for admission to the departmental service at Washington, 2 547 were examined for admission to the customs service, and 5,222 for admission to the postal service. During the same period 547 appointments were made from the eligible lists to the departmental service, 641 to the customs service, and 3,254 to the postal service.

Concerning separations from the classified service, the report only informs us of such as have occurred among the employes in the public service who had been appointed from eligible lists under civil-service rules. When these rules took effect they did not apply to the persons then in the service, comprising a full complement of employes who obtained their positions independently of the new law. The com. mission has no record of the separations in this numerous class, and the discrepancy apparent in the report between the number of appointments made in the respective branches of the service from the lists of the commission and the small number of separations mentioned is to a great extent accounted for by vacancies of which no report was made to the commission, occurring among those who held their places without examination and certification, which vacancies were filled by appointment from the eligible lists.

In the departmental service there occurred between the 16th day of January, 1886, and the 30th day of June, 1887, among the employes appointed from the eligible lists under civil service rules, seventeen removals, thirty-six resignations, and five deaths. This does not include fourteen separations in grade of special examiners, four by removal, five by resignation, and five by death.

In the classified customs and postal service the number of separations among those who received absolute appointments under civil service rules are given for the period between the 1st day of January, 1886, and the 30th day of June, 1887. It appears that such separations in the customs service for the time mentioned embraced twenty-one removals, five deaths, and eighteen resignations, and in the postal service two hundred and fifty-six removals, twenty-three deaths, and four hundred and sixty-nine resignations.

More than a year has passed since the expiration of the period covered by the report of the commission. Within the time which has thus elapsed many important changes have taken place in furtherance of a reform in our civil service. The rules and regulations governing the execution of the law upon the subject have been completely remodeled in such manner as to render the enforcement of the statute more effective and greatly increase its usefulness.

Among other things, the scope of the examinations prescribed for those who seek to enter the classified service has been better defined and made more practical, the number of names to be certified from the eligible lists to the appointing officers from which a selection is made has been reduced from four to three, the maximum limitation of the age of persons seeking entrance to the classified service to fortyfive has been changed, and reasonable provision has been made for the transfer of employes from one Department to another in proper cases. A plan has also been devised providing for the examination of applicants for promotion in the service, which, when in full operation, will eliminate all chance of favoritism in the advancement of employes, by making promotion a reward of merit and faithful discharge of duty.

Until within a few weeks there was no uniform classification of employes in the different Executive Departments of the Government. As a result of this condition,

in some of the Departments positions could be obtained without civil-service examination because they were not within the classification of such Department, while in other Departments an examination and certification were necessary to obtain positions of the same grade, because such positions were embraced in the classifications applicable to those Departments.

The exception of laborers, watchmen, and messengers from examination and classification gave opportunity, in the absence of any rule guarding against it, for the employment, free from civil-service restrictions, of persons under these designations who were immediately detailed to do clerical work.

All this has been obviated by the application to all the Departments of an extended and uniform classification embracing grades of employes not heretofore included, and by the adoption of a rule prohibiting the detail of laborers, watchmen, or messengers to clerical duty.

The path of civil-service reform has not at all times been pleasant nor easy. The scope and purpose of the reform have been much misapprehended; and this has not only given rise to strong opposition, but has led to its invocation by itsfriends to compass objects not in the least related to it. Thus partisans of the patronage system have naturally condemned it. Those who do not understand its meaning either mistrust it, or when disappointed because in its present stage it is not applied to every real or imaginary ill, accuse those charged with its enforcement with faithless to civil service reform.

Its importance has frequently been underestimated; and the support of good men has thus been lost by their lack of interest in its success. Besides all these difficulties, those responsible for the administration of the Government in its executive branches have been and still are often annoyed and irritated by the disloyalty to the service and the insolence of employes who remain in place as the beneficiaries, and the relics and reminders of the vicious system of appointment which civil-service reform was intended to displace.

And yet these are but the incidents of an advance movement, which is radical and far-reaching. The people are, notwithstanding, to be congratulated upon the progress which has been made, and upon the firm, practical, and sensible foundation upon which this reform now rests.

With a continuation of the intelligent fidelity which has hitherto characterized the work of the commission, with a continuation and increase of the favor and liberality which have lately been evinced by the Congress in the proper equipment of the commission for its work, with a firm but conservative and reasonable support of the reform by all its friends, and with the disappearance of opposition which must inevitably follow its better understanding, the execution of the civil service law cannot fail to ultimately answer the hopes in which it has its origin.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 21, 1888.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CONDITION OF THE CIVIL SERVICE.

THE DEPTH OF DEGRADATION WHICH THE SERVICE HAD REACHED UNDER REPUBLICAN RULE.

In the Fourth Annual Report of the Civil Service Commission, just sent to Congress by the President, the condition which the civil service of the United States had reached after a quarter of a century of Republican domination is strongly and graphically depicted. This Commission is composed of members selected from both parties, and its members have made a careful study of the serious evils which had grown up under the long rule of the Republican party. The Commission thus describes the state of affairs which existed before the civil service law took effect:

EMPLOYED WITHOUT AUTHORITY OF LAW.

Before the enactment of the civil service act the condition of the executive civil service in the departments at Washington and in the customs and postal services was deplorable. In the Department of the Treasury 3,400 persons were at one time employed less than 1,600 of them under authority of law. Of these 3,400 employes 1,700 were put on and off the rolls at the pleasure of the secretary, who paid them out of funds that had not by law been appropriated for the payment of such employes.

At that time, of a force of 958 persons employed in the bureau of engraving and printing, 539, with annual salaries amounting to $390,000, were, upon an investigation of that bureau, found to be superfluous. For years the force in some branches of that bureau had been twice and even three times as great as the work required. In one division there was a sort of platform, built underneath the iron roof, about seven feet above the floor, to accommodate the superfluous employes. In another division twenty messengers were employed to do the work of one. The committee that made this investigation reported that "patronage," what is known as the "spoils system," was responsible for this condition, and declared that this system had cost the people millions of dollars in that branch of the service alone.

So great was the importunity for place under the old system of appointments that when $1,600 and $1,800 places became vacant the salaries thereof would be allowed to lapse, to accumulate, so that these accumulations might be divided among the applicants for place on whose behalf patronage-mongers were incessant in importunity. In place of one $1,800 clerk three would be employed at $600 each; would be employed, according to the peculiarly expressive language of the patronage-purveyors, "on the lapse." "In one case," said a person of reliability and accurate information, testifying before the Senate committee on civil service reform and retrenchment, "thirty-five persons were put on the 'lapse fund' of the treasurer's office for eight days at the end of a fiscal year to sop up some money which was in danger of being saved and returned to the treasury."

THE CONDITION OF CUSTOM HOUSES AND POSTOFFICES.

Unnecessary employes abounded in every department, in every customs office, and in almost every postoffice. Dismissals were made for no other purpose than to supply with places the proteges of importunate solicitors for spoils. One collector at the port of New York removed on an average one of his employes every third day to make a vacancy to

be filled by some member of the same party who had "worked to a purpose," not against the common political enemy but for his patron, who had succeeded in being appointed over some other member of his own party.

Another collector at that port, the successor of the one above referred to, removed 830 of his 903 subordinates at the average rate of three in every four days. The successor of this collector removed, within eighteen months, 510 of his 892 subordinates, and his successor made removals at the rate of three every five days. In its first report the commission said:

It was the expectation of such spoils which gave each candidate for collector the party strength which secured his confirmation. Thus, during a period of five years in succession, collectors, all belonging to one party, for the purpose of patronage, made removals at a single office of members of their own party more frequently than at the rate of one every day. In 1,565 secular days 1,678 such removals were made.

A condition of affairs as deplorable existed in the postal service.

On all sides, in every branch of the civil service, subordinate places were used in the interest of the leaders of the factions of a party, who by assessments, which were disguised in the form of solicitations for money, suggestions that money ought to be contributed, and other methods of this kind, extorted from public employes funds which were used for political purposes, legitimate and otherwise. Even members of Congress of national reputation signed circular letters addressed to subordinate civil servants of the Government requesting contributions to be paid to them, as members of a political committee; doing this in utter disregard of the spirit of a provision of the Revised Statutes declaring it to be unlawful, an offense punishable by fine and dismissal from office, for any officer in the public service to solicit or receive money from any other officer in such service!

The public conscience had peen perverted by the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils; and the people were not shocked when they beheld public offices bestowed, as a reward for partisan services, upon persons at once unworthy and incompetent. Senator Hoar, in his speech on the Belknap impeachment trial, forcefully stated the condition of the public mind at that time when he said:

ITS CONDITION AS DESCRIBED BY A REPUBLICAN LEADER.

"I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in office, that the true way by which power should be gained in this republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge.” The evidence is abundant that under the patronage system of appointments appointments were not, in fact, made by the President, or by the heads of the departments in whom Congress has vested authority to appoint subordinate officers. Nearly all such appointments were really made by members of the legislative branch of the Government, or by other influential politicians; and were not made upon any tests of fitness whatever. In proof of this assertion it may be mentioned that before the civil-service act became a law the secretary of one of the most important departments of the Government once stated that there were seventeen clerks under his authority for whom he could find no employment; that he did need one competent clerk of a higher grade, and that if an appropriation were made for that one clerk, at the proper amount and according to the gradations of the service, and the appropriation for the seventeen were left out, he could, without impairing the efficiency of his department, leave the seventeen clerks off the role; but if the appropriation for the seventeen clerks were continued, the personal, social, and political pressure was so great that he would be obliged to employ and pay them, though he could find no employment for them.

Under a system of the evils of which this is but a specimen, could the head of any department, or even the President, act independently, and in fairness be held responsible for his administration of the public affairs committed to his charge? It had come to pass that the chief labor of the President and of the heads of departments, customs offices, and postoffices was rewarding the personal friends and punishing the personal foes of the leaders of the dominant faction of the dominant party. These, with all their retainers, appeared to the appointing officers, from the President down, in the first hours of power, and were always thereafter with them, requiring their attention in the consideration of demands for places.