sary or so well rendered as on the victorious side in the late campaign. An intelligent and sleepless county chairman was a most comforting assurance. Nevertheless the question of campaign service is easily settled. Much of it has always been done and always will and ought to be done without hope or expectation of reward. All which cannot for good reason be so done, and there is much, should be paid for openly and publicly out of the campaign fund; much already is so paid for. The close of the campaign should leave the account between the workers and the party balanced. It is not now regarded as balanced, and every place not within the civil service rules will be demanded of Mr. McKinley to complete the payment. The demand will be made in entire confidence that it will be acceded to on the ground that the incumbents have been in four years; and where the law does not so limit the term, it will be claimed that custom amply does.

I cannot find that in dividing spoil any distinction has been made between offices where the commissions run four years and where they run indefinitely. The fourth-class postmasters are an overwhelming evidence; with every change of party 50,000 of them have gone in and out. It is most desirable that Congress repeal the laws which seem to fix the tenure at four years. It would show that Congress had at last come up even with the progress of the reform. But it would be a serious mistake to admit that rapid and steady progress can be interrupted by the failure of Congress to perform its duty. The completion of the reform in the federal service must not be made to depend upon this repeal. Congressmen do not have us in their eye; that space is entirely occupied by party managers and workers at home. There is no longer doubt but that Congressmen are glad of the great number of places we have taken away from them and that they would be glad to see the rest taken if it could be done without their seeming to have a hand in it. But they know that primaries and conventions are still managed by a mere fraction of the party and that that fraction never forgives a shrinkage in patronage. It is well to remember also that the repeal if accomplished would not stand in the way of a President or a party intent upon destroying the merit system.

The reform can be completed in spite of the four-year laws. In all the years of this agitation I have believed that

the one unfailing source of progress and success was the will of the President acting under the powers conferred upon him by the Constitution. That is now our ample resource. Once inaugurated, the President has but to take his stand and the thing is done. The rock-bottom of that stand is that Congressmen are not part of the appointing power. There was a time when custom furnished some shadow of excuse, but in the light which accomplished reform in the federal service throws, any attempt by individual congressmen to "name" persons for places, is a presumptious and impertinent interference with the duties of the President. Time has been when Presidents were afraid of congressmen and felt that they must yield to them. Such yielding now in face of the general contempt in which office-brokers are held could not plead any kind of necessity.

It does not make any difference how many times or how many years it is said that you can with propriety go upon the street and pick up a politician and make him the head of an office filled with skilled and experienced employees, numbers of them more fitted for the place than himself, it is not true and will never be true. Such a practice would wreck any private business. It is a fraud upon the public and it is a gross injustice in depriving under-employees of a chance of promotion. The practice will not continue because the interests of business and good sense and fairness cry out against it. Mr. McKinley is not free in the matter. He is bound by his platform and by his own repeated utterances. It will not do for him to leave his sincerity to be questioned; he must take up the work where his predecessor leaves it and go forward to the end. To urge that four-year commissions or four-year custom stand in the way would be a childish excuse. The first principle to be laid down by President McKinley is that there are no offices to be divided as spoil. The second principle is the same and the last is like unto it.

There are some 65,000 fourth-class post offices. These are destined to pass away as little political centers and except in sparsely settled districts their places will be taken by sub-stations under the control of a neighboring central authority which will bring the benefits of free delivery and good service to nearly all of the people and the employees will be within the classified service. The plan has been developed under the present administration and the new administration has but to

occupy the ground. If it is said that legislation is needed, the administration should answer that it will leave things as they are until such legislation is had. If the gross injustice of transfering so many positions of one party to the classified service should be urged, it should be answered that no such transfer is to be made but that the present incumbents have only the right of competition for the new places.

The presidential offices are a much easier problem. The President may nominate whom he will to be postmaster. He has but to direct the Civil Service Commission to prepare a scheme of promotion which under competitive tests shall bring to him out of the postal service names of men fit to be postmaster, and from these names send his nominations to the senate. This practice may be applied to every non-political office it is not new for it is now applied in some portions of the consular service.

I desire to add that I am not wedded to a plan for any branch of the service. When there is a will there is no difficulty about a way. We can not expect congressmen to take the lead. Already the four-year signs which have been familiar to us for a life-time are re-appearing. The petition of the place-seeker is on its rounds and careful calculations are being made as to what patronage the representative of the right party stripe will control, and what senator or party leader will "name" men for places in districts of the wrong stripe. Men are working with members elect of legislatures to secure their votes for senatorial candidates and the federal offices which the successful candidate will control are having their usual weight in the contest. Congressmen willing or unwilling seem to acquiesce and participate in this old-fashioned movement for a division of spoil and in such ways as deciding whether or not elections shall be held for post masters have assumed the air of ownership. It is unsafe to rely upon their voluntarily voting themselves to be law makers and nothing more. It will be President McKinley's duty to break this practice up. There would be some opposition; the opposition would be noisy, but after all it would only embrace a small fraction of the President's party, and would be helpless against the President sustained by the ample power of the constitution and by the approval of the great body of the people.

Civil Service Commissions Essential to Civil

Service Reform.

BY HON. DORMAN B. EATON.

THE enemies of civil service reform in the State of New York are preparing for a combined assault upon her reform system at the next session of her legislature. This assault will be novel in kind, highly plausible in theory, and well calculated to deceive the friends of reform who do not understand the practical methods essential for its success. Yet, if it shall prevail, it is sure to be-as it is intended to be--disastrous to the reform policy of the State.

The direct object, and only avowed purpose of the assault, is to deprive the state commission of essential power over the examinations-if possible to supersede the Commission altogether-and substitute for the present examinations under it, a series of detached and miscellaneous examinations under which the official head of every department and great office-State and Municipal alike-will have a special examination to be devised and controlled by himself, which will be the only one required for entrance to the part of the public service over which he presides. Though it is not admitted to be a part of the scheme to allow every head of a bureau and division-in State and city departments-to have an examination to suit himself, the logic and tendency of the proposed new system of disintegration and feebleness will make this result, which every boss, spoils-system politicians, greatly desires both inevitable and speedy.

We shall be told that, under the new plan proposed, the examinations upon which we insist will continue, that merit and fitness will be tested by them, and that there will be the competition which is required by the New York constitution of 1895. This constitution proclaims a noble reform policy in these memorable words: "Appointments and promotions in the civil service of the State and of all the civil divisions

thereof, including cities and villages, shall be made according to merit and fitness to be ascertained, so far as practicable, by examinations, which, so far as practicable, shall be competitive."

The leaders of this assault will declare their object to be, not to defeat this constitutional policy, not to suppress anything of real value, but merely to improve the agencies by which Civil Service reform and this policy are to be made effective, without the incumbrance and expense of a civil service commission. In fact, our assailants present themselves as advanced reformers, who merely seek to improve the methods of the old reformers.

For mere scheming politicians, patronage mongering party managers, and bosses to pretend to seek the advancement of civil service reform, which they have always opposed and now detest, and the more efficient execution of this new constitutional policy, which they have bitterly resisted, and which now threatens the speedy extinction of the spoils system by which they prosper, is a piece of audacious and mendacious impudence as incommensurable as it is grotesquely ridiculous. The appetite of the tiger and the shark may doubtless be greatly modified, but before we can trust them, it is prudent to have some evidence of a change of taste.

The leaders of this assault have for two years in succession refused-despite the exhortations of the Governor-to discharge their plain duty to enact a law in aid of the execution of this high constitutional policy. This refusal to enact such a law, which the Constitution in express terms requires, is, in substance, a violation of their oaths of office, a deliberate and treasonable defiance of their duty to obey the Constitution, and a cowardly rebellion against the form of government under which they live. That this treacherous policy has been pursued -in conspiracy with the Tammany leaders--in the hope of defeating the purpose of the constitution and the will of the people -is a fact too plain to be doubted.

The simple fact that the enemies of reform seek to suppress commissions is, in substance, an avowal of the further facts that they find them an effective force in restraint of the spoils system, and very troublesome bodies in the way of all those who seek, under that system, to grasp and distribute patronage and spoils for personal and party gain. If bosses, politicians, and thrifty patronage-mongers do not think they