The sole purpose of discussing the Civil Service System in this connection is to show what must ensue if the government continues its trend and enlarges its business operations. Partisan politics cannot be eliminated, neither does the Civil Service secure the most efficient. Concrete and actual instances are given as illustrations.

So much has been said in favor of Civil Service by its friends, and so much criticism offered by those who know little about it, that I am impelled to submit a few observations drawn from five years’ experience at the head of a department having, a portion of the time, as high as twenty thousand people on its payroll, over ninety percent of whom were in the classified service.

It is not my purpose to criticise or commend. I do intend, however, to make reasonably clear some of the inevitable conditions that would ensue if the government should remain operator or should become owner and operator of railroads, merchant ships, express, cable, telegraph and telephone companies, and other public utilities, constructor of airplanes, merchant ships, and logically producers of all materials and supplies therefor.

Everyone concedes that to avoid complete partisan prostitution of these widely-extended and diversified interests, every agent, servant and employee, with the possible exception of unskilled laborers, would have to be covered under Civil Service. This would palliate the evil but, as we shall presently see, would not prevent political manipulation and influence, and would render efficient service absolutely impossible.

It will be idle to approach this subject without recognizing a very marked distinction between business operations and government service. Business is conducted primarily for the profit that legitimately results. The wise man knows, however, that the better the service, the more certain his rewards. The merchant who best serves his customers will have the most customers to serve, and the lawyer who best protects his clients will have the largest and the most lucrative practice. Service and profit are seldom divorced. If it be true, as has been said, that a grateful people will make a beaten path to the door of him who improves a mousetrap, it is also equally true that the world’s financial rewards are liberal beyond calculation to him who renders any substantial service.

This principle does not apply to government matters. Here the ultimate end is not profit, but power. While a political party may hope to be continued if its service is acceptable, it has no right to expect its administration will be acceptable if it neglects the ordinary methods by which approval is secured—which is politics. In politics, everything reasonable and honest is made to serve the ends of politics, exactly as in business everything reasonable and honest is made to contribute to profit.

A most natural result of public service is loyalty to superiors. This is true in a very marked degree in all government departments. If government clerks were to vote, I suppose three-fourths of them would support the party in power, without regard to which party it happened to be. One-half of the balance would fear even to vote lest they might cause offense and prejudice their promotion—the sole consideration with many department clerks—while only a comparative few would openly support the opposite party and some of these would subsequently regret it.

A case is current where an official who is supposed not to be devoid of future political ambition, said to a friend who had witnessed the obsequious servility of subordinates: “There are two million of these and every one is a voter.”

You will recognize that no promotion, demotion or dismissal within a business organization invites newspaper comment or criticism from friend or foe. In government service the exact opposite is the rule. When constituents inform a congressman that someone from his district has had his salary reduced, the whole delegation from that state get busy. Let it be known that some clerk has been longer in a department than another who has received more promotion, and an explanation is certain to be demanded, and it is relatively useless to urge inefficiency as the cause. In such cases the public ascribes but two causes, politics and favoritism.

While “offensive partisanship” is publicly forbidden, it is generally recognized on the inside that no activity of a partisan character is “offensive” so long as it is quiet, and is exercised in favor of the party in power. Public officials, of the rank of postmasters, customs and internal revenue collectors, and district attorneys are not expected to be delegates to political conventions, but I have never known their superiors, when of the same political faith, to object to their being in the town while the convention is in session, maintaining suitable headquarters at the hotel, and even volunteering valuable advice to those who happen to call, as well as to those who are sent for.

But politics is not the only weakness of the system. The public has been taught to believe that Civil Service examinations result in securing the most efficient. This is a serious delusion.

Those who take civil service examinations usually find their names rejected or upon the eligible list within six months. It takes about that long to classify. Any time within two years thereafter the applicant is liable to be certified and called.

When a requisition is made the Commission certifies three names. It is not at all likely that they are the three whose examinations show them the best qualified. That question is not considered—applicants either pass or fail. They are simply the three names at the head of the list from the state whose quota is not exhausted. The officer calling for the clerk examines the records of the certified names and makes a selection. Thereupon the applicant is notified to present himself at a given place where the minimum salary—in normal times seven hundred dollars per annum—awaits him. Even though he took his examination only twelve months before, the chances are he declines, giving as his reason that he is now getting a thousand dollars with good prospects of promotion.

It is only a question of time, however, when some applicant will be found who, during the period between examination and certification, varying from six months to two years and six months, has been unable to get a job at seven hundred dollars and he jumps at the chance to “serve his country.”

You knew this must be the way but probably you had not stopped to analyze it. The Civil Service screen is so constructed as to catch the small fish and allow the large ones to escape. And there is no way known to man to change it without opening wide the door for favoritism, which the Civil Service system is supposed to close and effectively bar.

Nevertheless some of the clerks and employees selected in this way develop a good degree of efficiency and prove far better than anyone would expect from an inspection of the machinery by which they are secured. With scarcely an exception they are honest and conscientious toilers, with very little ambition. A few have ambition but these should, and usually do, soon resign.

I have in mind a business organization with several thousand on its payroll. Its operations extend from ocean to ocean and its employees include geologists, chemists, engineers of every kind, purchasing agents, salesmen, superintendents of both construction and transportation, clerks, clear down to unskilled laborers. Everyone connected with the organization is made to understand that any position is open to him provided he can show greater efficiency than the incumbent. While most of the force have grown up within the organization, not all have been started at the minimum salary nor promoted because of length of service. The former is insisted upon, and the latter urged, by all friends of Civil Service.

Imagine such a concern as I have described, depending upon an outside commission to examine and certify the people whom it might employ in its clerical and technical force, and being bound by its own by-laws not to employ anyone selected in any other way. No business concern could face competition and survive under such a system. Yet everyone recognizes that when applied to government affairs, Civil Service is not only the best but the only way. I am not criticising it. I am only showing the inevitable result if we change the purpose of government from the greatest liberty institution in the world to a corporation for the transaction of business.

During five years that I recruited the force of the Treasury Department from names certified by the Civil Service Commission, nothing occurred to engender ill feeling. The members of the Commission and the officers of the Treasury Department understood each other perfectly and sympathized. Every member of the Commission sought as best he could—subject, of course, to the restrictions and limitations of his office—to serve the Treasury Department, and the Secretary of the Treasury, believing in Civil Service, reciprocated. There were, however, some rather plain and expressive letters exchanged. Believing that letters that actually passed between departments are the best proof of conditions as they exist, I have inserted in the Appendix the material correspondence covering four distinct cases.

Some of the letters were answered by personal interviews but enough remains to show the cordial feeling that existed, as well as the nature of the contentions. It also reveals the earnestness with which the Secretary of the Treasury sought some relaxation in the rules which friends of the system, as well as the members of the Commission, insist must be rigidly enforced, and which were rigidly enforced.

The last case cited relates to a request for experienced lawyers for special agents of the Treasury Department. The necessity for these will be apparent to every experienced business man.

Many of the tariff rates are ad valorem, the duty being levied upon the foreign market value of the imported merchandise. Importers are required to enter their goods at the price at which such articles are usually bought and sold in the country of their origin. Undervaluation by unscrupulous importers is the most common way of defrauding the government. Cases of alleged undervaluation are tried by the Board of General Appraisers, at which the importers are represented by lawyers who make a specialty of this class of cases. They are not only men of experience but many of them possess great natural aptitude. Some, I suppose, make as high as fifty thousand dollars per annum. The government is represented by attorneys who receive, if I remember correctly, three thousand dollars per annum, and the cases are usually prepared by special agents, or special employees, who receive from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars per annum. The government is at a tremendous disadvantage. I have heard it estimated that the Treasury loses two hundred million dollars per annum through undervaluations. I think this is excessive but unquestionably it runs into tens of millions.

I desired several country lawyers who had had actual experience in trying cases, and asked the Civil Service Commission to provide an eligible list. The need of capable men in this particular branch of the service is well illustrated by the following incidents.

Certain importers were entering their merchandise, which had been paid for in Indian rupees, as costing the bullion value of rupees, about twenty cents. England was maintaining the parity of the rupee at about fifty cents in our money. The Secretary of the Treasury certified that the rupee was worth fifty cents and directed that duties be collected accordingly. As was anticipated, the importers all paid under protest and one of them prosecuted an appeal. A decision against the government was rendered by the Board of General Appraisers and by all the courts including the Supreme Court of the United States. I ordered that another case be made and gave instructions how it should be prepared. Again, much to my surprise, the government was defeated. Investigation showed that the second case had been prepared exactly like the first. More detailed instructions were given and the government was successful, and more than one million dollars that had been paid by importers under protest, was saved to the government and at least two hundred thousand dollars per annum from then until now. Any country lawyer with a general practice would have known how to prepare and present the case in the first instance.

The Treasury Department has several special agents in Europe whose business it is to look after and discover evidence of undervaluation, as well as other frauds upon the revenues of the country. The Department knew that certain merchandise was viciously undervalued, but the special agents all failed to get material evidence. Special employees were not then under Civil Service and I got an up-state lawyer from New York to accept a position as special employee, sent him to Europe and he came back with evidence that secured advances in valuations which saved the government perhaps fifty thousand dollars a year from one importer alone.

Appendix “D” will show the material correspondence concerning this particular request for experienced trial lawyers. My first request is dated September 20, 1905; my second, October 14th of the same year. Finally the Commission replied and its first letter bears date of December 2, 1905. It mentions oral requests also having been made. Several examinations were held but up to the time I left the Treasury Department, March 4, 1907, no eligible list had been provided containing a single lawyer who had ever prepared or tried a case in any court. The department needed at least six, could have profitably used twelve, but could not and did not get one. If interested read Appendix “D.” You will detect enough spice to give it a flavor not its own.

The correspondence set out in Appendix “C” has reference to a tobacco examiner. Tobacco intended for Florida was being imported from Cuba at a certain inland city and then shipped back to Tampa and Key West. The duty on unstemmed wrapper tobacco was at that time $1.85 per pound and only 35 cents per pound on unstemmed filler tobacco. When any bale of tobacco contained more than fifteen per cent wrapper, the entire bale was dutiable as wrapper. There was a further provision that tobacco from two or more provinces or dependencies, if mixed, should be dutiable at $1.85 per pound, regardless of its character. Naturally, a tobacco examiner should know something about tobacco. In fact, that is the only subject that a tobacco examiner need know anything about. The correspondence will show the efforts made to secure one and the desire of the Civil Service Commission to aid, as well as the disaster which it believed would follow if the Treasury Department was allowed any voice in the manner of the examination or in classification of those who took the same.

Appendix “B” has reference to a tea examiner, another position that, in the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, should be filled by an expert.

The correspondence with reference to a tobacco examiner began some time in 1904. My first rejection of each of the three names certified as being eligible is dated December 15, 1904. The request for a tea examiner was made somewhat later. I quote a paragraph from the Civil Service Commission’s letter of December 9, 1905, which, though written with special reference to the request for eligible trial lawyers, mentions both tobacco and tea examiners:

“Your attention is also invited to the recent examination for tea examiner and tobacco examiner at the Port of ——. Owing to objections by your Department to eligibles certified, it became necessary to hold three examinations before a selection was made for tobacco examiner and two examinations before a selection was made for tea examiner. The examinations finally resulted in the selection of the temporary employees, who, in the judgment of the Commission, after careful investigation, have no unusual qualifications for the duties to be performed and came in at the advanced age of sixty-three years. It seemed to the Commission so apparent that the examinations in question had not resulted in securing to the government the services of the most suitable competitors, that it became necessary for it to recommend to the President that it be relieved of all responsibility for these examinations and on November 18th, the President placed in the excepted class, one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at the Port of ——, which employees do not now have the status of competitive employees.”

It will be noted that the Civil Service Commission itself finally recognized such a weakness in the system that it consented and even recommended that Treasury officials be permitted to select one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at one port, though the last phrase quoted seems to betray a slight apprehension of disaster resulting from there being in the United States two examiners, each requiring very accurate and technical qualifications, “who do not now have the status of competitive employees.”

Appendix “A” is limited to two letters written by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Civil Service Commission refusing to approve rules and regulations which it proposed to promulgate, unless the President so directed. I will add that the President did not so direct. In this instance, as in the last two, the Secretary of the Treasury had his way.

While on this subject, I cannot refrain from discussing Civil Service as applied to our diplomatic and consular service.

There is quite a widespread demand that everything shall be taken out of politics, and a presumption is indulged, that, if this were done, all of the evils which now inhere in representative government would be cured. Undoubtedly men have been rewarded for political service with appointments to foreign fields, and some of these appointees have been wanting both in business experience and education as well as in aptitude. On the other hand, it is most unfortunate if only those who are disqualified for positions of responsibility are interested in politics. If every public position at home and abroad were to be filled with those who either take no interest in public affairs, or by those who are incapable of exerting any political influence, do you think the service would be materially improved?

The further criticism is indulged that administrations make foreign appointments from among their party friends, and utterly ignore adherents of the opposite political faith. Has it ever occurred to you that when a man is unable to find as good and able men among those who believe in political doctrines which he advocates as are available among his opponents, he ought in justice to himself to renounce allegiance to the party he believes in, and join the ranks of those with whom he disagrees?

Undoubtedly, the United States has sent some chumps abroad, but anyone who has lived long in Washington must have recognized that other countries also occasionally have chumps in their diplomatic service. After some years’ observation, I asked John Hay, then Secretary of State, whose experience at home and observation abroad better qualified him to speak than any other man in America, how our diplomatic and consular service compared with that of other countries. Promptly and without hesitation, he said: “It is universally recognized everywhere that American foreign service is the best in the world.”

One might as well expect to develop a successful trial lawyer by confining him to a law school all his life, or a successful business man by keeping him indefinitely in a business college, as to expect to produce an efficient representative of American interests abroad by requiring him to spend the most virile period of his life in studying how to represent these interests and all the while keeping him out of touch with the interests which he is to represent. A lawyer should understand his client’s business, if possible, better than his client. If he is to represent mining interests, he should know metallurgy, all processes of mining, reduction of ores and mining practices, as well as mining laws. Before a man can successfully, advantageously and wisely represent American interests abroad, he must understand American interests at home. He must have a practical knowledge of what Americans require in foreign countries, and the natural effect at home of the things he is trying to do abroad.

When confined to clerical positions, Civil Service is a lesser evil than anything else that has been tried, but it falls far short of being a panacea. When applied to positions requiring scientific, professional, technical or expert knowledge, it is an utter failure. If the government extends beyond its appropriate functions, and enters the business arena, Civil Service will result, first, in the greatest possible inefficiency; second, in political manipulation and control of everything, and, third, in transforming a hitherto virile and self-reliant people into a race of pap seekers. If the government pursues its present trend and enters one field of business activity after another it will logically end with everyone on the government payroll and all of us working for the rest of us and taxing ourselves to pay pensions to ourselves. When a government once enters the field of paternalism there is no place where it can logically stop.