Page:The Necessity and Progress of Civil Service Reform.pdf/26

 custom-houses and postoffices in the country, and in the Indian service. Appointments to these places are made only after examinations which are accessible to all, and which subject the qualifications of the applicants for the places to be filled to appropriate tests. These examinations are, with few exceptions, competitive—that is to say, only candidates who come out at the head of the list are certified for appointment. They are appointed at first only for a probationary period, and if they prove themselves efficient, the appointment is made final. From the whole proceeding political considerations are rigidly excluded. Inquiry into the party affiliation of the candidate is prohibited. Political recommendations are not accepted. There the machine boss, the party magnate or committee, have nothing to say. And in the offices so manned Democrats. Republicans and Independents work harmoniously together, each one relying upon his efficiency in the discharge of official duty for continuance in office and for preferment.

Neither is the success of the system in increasing the efficiency of the service any longer a matter of the slightest doubt. Not only has one Department chief after another—even those who had begun to test it with a prejudice against its practicability—in the strongest terms borne witness to its beneficial results, many of them declaring they did not see how without it they could satisfactorily do the business of their Departments, but there are instances in which its usefulness, aye, its indispensableness, can be demonstrated by figures. One such instance is the Railway Mail Service, which attends to the sorting and distributing of mail matter on railway trains in motion. The high importance of this branch of the postal service to the business of the country, which needs not only a safe but a prompt transmission of letters, requires no elucidation. The Railway Mail clerk, especially on the great through routes where the mass of mail matter is bewilderingly great, has a task to perform which demands not only considerable knowledge of the geography of the country, but also that