Treasury Department, Nov. 11, 1903.

To Civil Service Commission:

Your letter of November 4th relative to the adoption of rules governing the employment of laborers in the Federal Service at Boston is at hand. I will have occasion to take the matter up with the President, and if he desires the rules signed I shall be glad to comply. Otherwise I shall decline.

My principal objection is the fact that paragraph 6, “Definition of Classified Work,” contained in the regulations governing the employment of classified laborers, adopted July 23, 1903, has proved very impracticable. In fact that Department not only violates these rules every day, but ignores them and is compelled to do so. I am also advised that the Civil Service Commission not only violates them, but ignores them. I respect the Commission for doing this, and my respect would not be diminished if it would repeal such regulations as have to be ignored by the very men who promulgate them. The fact that they are thus ignored by the Civil Service Commission is supported by the clear and repeated statement of a member of the Commission, made in my office.

And this is not all. It is well nigh impossible to secure from the skilled laborer register of the Commission persons who are willing to perform the menial service which is required of unskilled laborers. The rule referred to forbids our taking unskilled laborers from our payroll to perform this menial service, and permit them incidentally to perform service that requires a knowledge of reading and writing. We are now in the midst of a prolonged correspondence with the Civil Service Commission over a case arising at San Francisco where the offense was that an unskilled laborer, assigned to handle merchandise, was permitted to go to a pile of bales and boxes on the docks and select a package that was needed for examination, and exercised his ability to read the number on the package. Had some skilled laborer gone with the unskilled laborer, to read the number, and had then informed the unskilled laborer that that package bore the desired number, all would have been well. Under the rules for which you are contending it requires two men to get a package, when either one can get it alone, and then it takes a man and a stenographer in this office to conduct the correspondence that grows out of the offense of allowing either one to do it unaided by the other. If the President wants this condition inaugurated at Boston and other ports, as well as at San Francisco, I shall be very glad to see that it is done.

I will be very glad to co-operate with the Civil Service Commission to improve the service in this Department, not only in Boston but in every port. I am a firm believer in Civil Service, and, I may add, in the machinery of Civil Service but I am more interested in improving the product than in perfecting the machine. So far as I am concerned I will not voluntarily sign and promulgate rules for the mere sake of signing and promulgating rules. I will co-operate to the fullest extent in anything that will improve the service.

To the Civil Service Commission:

Your letter of the 14th inst, submitting for approval a statement of physical requirements for male unskilled laborers is received.

I am unalterably opposed to a graduated scale of physical ability. If a man of medium weight, 130 lbs., and minimum height, 5 ft. 3 in., and with strength to carry a minimum weight, 150 lbs., is to be marked 70, as you propose, then a man weighing 200 lbs., 6 ft. tall, and able to carry 200 lbs., would I supposed be marked 80; and a man weighing 300 lbs., 6 ft. 5 in. in height, and able to carry 500 lbs., should be marked 100. No one would have such a man around. He would be physically incompetent. Either a man is physically competent or he is not. Most of the defects referred to as sufficient to justify rejection are all right. I have no objection to a list of competents being made and from that list we will select. But I would rather base my judgment upon the appearance of an applicant who would come into the office and say “good morning” and retire than all the physical examinations that the Civil Service Commission can give.

I do not care to prolong the correspondence; I simply will not consent to accept unskilled laborers on a graduated scale of physical ability. I do not care whether a man can lift 150 lbs. or 400 lbs. when there be only 10 lbs. to lift.