Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/157

Rh when those in power show a yielding disposition, and especially when reasons are pointed out to them why they may demand more.

Look from this point of view at the example under discussion. I repeat, the exemption of the shipping commissioners is, as to their small number, comparatively unimportant. But when the Administration tells us that they had to be exempted because the required judicial temperament cannot be demonstrated by examination, the case becomes one of far reaching consequence. There is a very large number of positions now under the civil service rules, the duties of which are more or less quasi-judicial, such as the examiners in the Patent Office, and many division chiefs and high grade clerks in various departments who have to prepare the decision of cases. Now if the shipping commissioners must be exempted from the rules because their judicial temperament cannot be demonstrated by examination, although examination may demonstrate other required qualifications, why should not the other places I have named, be exempted for the same reason, thus to be placed within the reach of spoils politics?

But the question is a still larger one. Everybody knows that there is hardly an employment under the Government for the perfect discharge of the duties of which this or that quality of character or mental habit is not desirable, that cannot be demonstrated by examination, while other and perhaps more important qualifications can be so demonstrated. Now, what would become of the whole merit system if we were to admit, as the Administration virtually does, that because some qualifications cannot be demonstrated, the ascertainment by examination of other requirements must be abandoned, and the selection of all those places must therefore be yielded to the party magnates as heretofore? The