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EVERAL younger members of the National Civil Service Reform League have asked me to express at this annual meeting my views on the progress and present state of our cause. I shall do so briefly and with that frankness and impartiality which have always been characteristic of the utterances of our League, and without which, in fact, the League cannot expect to maintain its usefulness. I shall confine myself to a very few points of vital importance.

I think it is no exaggeration to say that the cause of civil service reform has by this time substantially accomplished the conquest of public opinion in this country. The theoretical discussion of the question, whether the merit system or the spoils system is to be preferred as to its effect upon the honesty and efficiency of the public service, as well as upon our political life generally, may be considered as closed. The intelligence of the country, enlightened by practical experience, has, I think, pronounced its judgment in favor of the merit system so overwhelmingly that further argument of a speculative nature seems no longer needed.

I will not say that there are not politicians left who, seeking to build up political machines or to reward henchmen and finding the merit system in their way, will denounce it as a nuisance; or office-seekers who, unable to pass a civil service examination, find the competition rule woefully un-American. Of course, there are, and always will be, such interested objectors. But their objections have, in the face of experience, lost what moral authority they once had. Even that appeal to indolent conservatism which at the beginning of the reform move-