Page:The Democracy of the Merit System p17.jpg

 will again take refuge in general assertion and say that the public service is no better now than it was before the civil service law was enacted, and that the boasted merit system is therefore a practical failure.—To this daring allegation—daring I call it, for he who alleges this will have the courage to allege anything—you are able to oppose the crushing fact that since the enactment of the civil service law every President, whether Republican or Democrat, has in his official utterances borne the most ample testimony to the signal benefit the merit system has conferred upon the service in efficiency as well as in moral tone; that one Secretary after another, without distinction of party, has pronounced the merit system the only method by which the business of their departments could be carried on in an honest and proper manner; that ever so many executive offices who entered upon their duties with a prejudice against the merit system, have become ardent converts to it after some practical experience; and that, as the undisputed statistics of the service incontestably prove, wherever the merit system prevailed, more work was done by a smaller force and for less money than before, while, where it did not prevail, the old wastefulness in the multiplication of offices and salaries for little and frequently poor work continued; and that he who disputes this, might as well dispute the multiplication table.

And what has your spoils politician still to say after this? He then thinks it expedient to let others speak for him and brings on his witnesses. Here is the sorely aggrieved patriot who has been accustomed to be taken care of by influential politicians, who finds himself debarred from the public crib by the merit system, and who insists that a boss, or a party committee, or a member of Congress is a better judge of a man's fitness for office than an examining board. Here is the unfortunate who has failed in his examination and thus concludes that the whole system of examination is a cranky contrivance. Here is the man who knows of a case in which the spirit of the merit system has not been honestly enforced, and who therefore denounces civil service reform as a delusion and a snare. Here is the appointing officer who things that any restriction of his power to grant favors is an insult to his dignity, or who occasionally cannot get “the man he wants,” and who therefore concludes that