CHICAGO, ILL.: John W. Ela, Franklin MacVeagh, Adlai T. Ewing, Hon. Leroy B. Thoman, Hon. George E. Adams, Hon. Murray F. Tuley, William Kent, Harlan W. Cooley, Charles Deering, W. K. Ackerman, J. W. Brooks, Russell H. Curtis, Edward J. Phelps, Charles L. Hutchinson, George L. Paddock, proxy for Hon. Everett P. Wheeler, of New York; James S. Norton, Edwin Burritt Smith, John H. Hamline, Oliver T. Morton, Frank H. Scott, Bryan Lathrop, E. O. Brown, C. R. Crane, E. A Bancroft, J. J. Glessner, Murray Nelson and Cyrus H. Adams.

CINCINNATI C. B. Wilby.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: F. L. Siddons.

INDIANA: Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Lucius B. Swift, Prof. Demarchus C. Brown and Evans Woollen. CORNELL UNIVERSITY: Prof. J. W. Jenks.

MADISON, WIS.: Charles Kendall Adams and Charles Noble Gregory.

MARYLAND: Charles J. Bonaparte.

MILWAUKEE J. R. Brigham, Gen. F. C. Winkler, Bernard Goldsmith and Prof. J. J. Mapel.

MISSOURI: Henry Hitchcock, Hon. C. P. Walbridge, J. C. Cabanne and Albert Blair.

NASHVILLE, TENN.: Herman Justi.

NEW YORK CITY: Hon. Carl Schurz, Col. Silas W. Burt, Frederick W. Holls and George McAneny.

PHILADELPHIA, PENN.: Herbert Welsh, R. Francis Wood, Charles Richardson, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, and Prof. E. J. James

In response to invitations extended by the League to affiliated bodies, delegates were also present from a number of such organizations, as follows:

NATIONAL BOARD OF TRADE: John A. Gano of Cincinnati, A. C. Raymond of Detroit, and Henry A. Richmond of Buffalo.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LETTER-CARRIERS: J. C. Alton of Jamestown, N. Y., C. M. O'Brien of Cleveland, and John E. Hammond of Chicago.

MUNICIPAL LEAGUE OF MILWAUKEE : John A. Butler, J. E. Friend, J. R. Brigham and W. F. Nowell. MASSACHUSETTS REFORM CLUB: Richard Henry Dana. REFORM CLUB, New York: Charles Deering.

MUNICIPAL ORDER LEAGUE, Chicago:

sey.

PHILADELPHIA MUNICIPAL LEAGUE:

Mrs. I. M. Horn

Herbert Welsh,

R. Francis Wood, Charles Richardson and C. R. Woodruff.

Many of the delegates present from the Civil Service Reform Associations represented also the Anti-Spoils League.

The morning session of the 12th, commencing at 10.30 o'clock, was occupied by a joint meeting of the General and Executive Committees, held at the rooms of the Commerce Club in the Auditorium Building.

At 2.30 in the afternoon, an open meeting of the League was held at the Commerce Club, at which an address of welcome was delivered by the president of the Chicago Civil Service Reform League, Mr. John W. Ela, and the following papers were read:

"The Influence of the Spoils Idea upon the Government of American Cities." Herbert Welsh.*

"Citizenship and the Civil Service." Hon. C. P. Walbridge, Mayor of St. Louis.†

"Municipal Reform Impossible under the Spoils System." Chas. B. Wilby.‡

The annual address of the President, on "The Necessity and Progress of Civil Service Reform," was delivered at Central Music Hall at 8 o'clock in the evening of the 12th, before a large audience. It is as follows: + Page 68.

*Page 57.

#Page 79.

THE NECESSITY AND PROGRESS OF CIVIL

SERVICE REFORM.

An Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League at Chicago, Ill., December 12, 1894.

BY HON. CARL SCHURZ.

This is the first time that the National Civil Service Reform League holds its annual meeting near the great Mississippi Valley; but we know that its cause is no stranger here. Not only has it in this region some of its most faithful advocates, but the practical sense and the public spirit which have wrought here such wonders, seem to produce the very atmosphere in which this cause should prosper; for Civil Service Reform is, in the sense of an enlightened, large and patriotic public spirit, a preeminently practical conception-practical in its principles, practical in its aims, and practical in its methods.

What Civil Service Reform demands, is simply that the business part of the Government shall be carried on in a sound, businesslike manner. This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common sense there should be no two opinions about it. And the condition of things to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves. In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that viciousness and absurdity

home to our own minds unless we contemplate it as reflected in the mirror of a simile.

Imagine, then, a bank the stockholders of which, many in number, are divided into two factions-let us call them the Jones party and the Smith party-who quarrel about some question of business policy, as, for instance, whether the bank is to issue currency or not. The Jones party is in control, but the Smith men persuade over to their side a sufficient number of Jones men to give them -the Smith men-a majority at the next stockholders' meeting. Thus they succeed in getting the upper hand. They oust the old board of directors, and elect a new board consisting of Smith men. The new Smith board at once remove all the officers, president, cashier, tellers, bookkeepers, and clerks down to the messenger boysthe good and the bad alike-simply because they are Jones men, and fill their places forthwith with new persons who are selected, not on the ground that they have in any way proved their fitness for the positions so filled, but simply because they are Smith men; and those of the Smith men who have shown the greatest zeal and skill in getting a majority of votes for the Smith party are held to have the strongest claims for salaried places in the bank. The new men struggle painfully with the duties novel to them until they acquire some experience, but even then it needs in many instances two men or more to do the work of one.

In the course of events dissatisfaction spreads among the stockholders with the Smith management, partly shared by ambitious Smith men who thought themselves entitled to reward in the shape of places and salaries, but were left out in the cold." Now the time for a new stockholders' meeting arrives. After a hot fight the Jones party carries the day. Its ticket of directors being elected, off go the heads of the Smith president, the Smith cashier, the Smith tellers, the Smith bookkeepers and clerks, to be replaced by true-blue Jones men who have done the work of the campaign and are expected to do more of it when the next election And so the career of the bank goes on with

comes.