Courage: A Poem

Civil Service — The Merit System* By Julian M. Thomas

The great test of Democracy is efficiency. We desire officials who will carry out the policies of the people and are sympathetic to the pulse of public sentiment. Under them are many employees who perform purely administrative parts of public work. The business cannot be carried on to the best advantage of the public service unless these persons are efficient. The best method found so far for insuring efficiency is what is known as the Civil Service, or the Merit System. Civil Service reform began in England about eighty years ago. Its value was demonstrated and the examinations were soon extended to apply to many positions. According to Dorman B. Eaton, the father of the present federal Civil Service Law, party managers, patronage mongers, and especially the aristocratic classes, opposed these examinations from the beginning; for they set up personal merit against aristrocratic influence. "Before 1876 examinations had been extended to almost every branch of the civil, and to various parts of the military, administration, with immense advantage to the public service. They had been before established in British India and have since been more and more extended to English colonies. A quarter of a century or more ago civil service reform methods had ceased to be a matter of controversy either on the part of English parties or English statesmen. Partisan appointments and removals were long ago suppressed in English cities. And strange as it may seem to us, civil service reform methods have so completely suppressed patronage appointments and removals for party reasons, that upon a change of ministry in England less than a hundred officers altogether are changed.

• • • This reform in England has everywhere been a triumph of republic and democratic equality and justice largely — the victory of superior character and capacity in humble life — over that control of places in the public service which the privileged classes, the landed aristrocracy, and the patronagemongering rich men had monopolized for centuries." In the United States, the civil service eaxminations appeared to a very limited extent about 1853. However, these examina-

*Delivered before the Salt Lake Civic Club, March 7, 1916.