---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Cary, Phoebe
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 20
number: 6
published: 1917-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Phoebe Cary, "Courage: A Poem," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 6 (April 1917): 535.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2006unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera2006unse
start_page: 535
end_page: 535
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2006unse
  publication_year: 1917
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Courage: A Poem

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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.