Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/233

 POLITICS IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS 21$

influence, as all the men, amounting, perhaps, to several hundred, were voters)

From the secretary of a local civil-service reform association, April 30, 1898:

.... The county offices are not even yet under the civil-service laws, and 1 could get no clear information. 1 knew at the outset, however, in a general way, what has since been confirmed by the managing editors, city editors, and some of the reporters of several of the papers here, that in both the jail and penitentiary the administration is bad, and the offices are given through favoritism and not for fitness. I was told at more than one newspaper office that in both these places there is some abuse to write up every few months, and that the management is wasteful, inefficient, and incompetent. I could not get details from them. About two years ago there was a rather elaborate writing up of the penitentiary

From an ex-civil-service commissioner of New York city, April 30, 1898:

.... One of the most plausible sources of evasion of the requirements of the civil-service statute is the change in classification of the different posi- tions. This has not only been used as a means of transferring persons to the exempt schedule, so that no examination whatever should be required upon their admission to the public service, but offices have sometimes been created for the purpose of compelling the creation of a new eligible list, and the consequent filing of new applications, under circumstances when very few persons would know of the intended examination. The Civil-Service Commission undertook to guard against this method of evasion by establish- ing the practice that a mere change of name of a position should not be con- sidered as a change of classification, and that, if an eligible list existed for a given position, it should be used for all similar positions. This was a fruitful source of controversy with the departments, but we adhered to it rigidly, and with very good results.

In short, my experience as civil-service commissioner convinced me that the true conception of a civil-service office has not yet found a home in the minds of most public officials. This conception is that the true function of the office is to do for the heads of departments what in a small office, and with ample leisure, they might do for themselves, but what, under existing conditions, it is impracticable for them to do properly, that is to say, to abso- lutely undertake to furnish them with the most competent persons for any particular employment. I am convinced that where the examiners are com- petent, and where they have proper information in regard to the duties of the office, they can determine the fitness of candidates to the best advantage, and that by experience they come to be better qualified to do this than most pub- lic officials. I do not say this because I think they are by nature any wiser