Before increasing the business activities of the government and creating an enormous army of government officials, clerks and employees, all under Civil Service, it is well to consider some feasible plan of retirement, for it is a question that will not down.

The discussion of Civil Service as applied to governmental industrial operations will be incomplete unless it includes the question of retirement. Shall those who have been for many years on the government payroll be pensioned? With few exceptions that is what the present Civil Service employees desire. They claim to have served their country as faithfully, and much longer, than soldiers in the army, and therefore are entitled to equal recognition and honor.

Most thoughtful people are able to note some marked differences. Few who are physically fit fail when they seek admission to the army or navy, but I have known quite a number who have sought government positions in vain. In addition to this the pay of the soldier is very meagre, while that of civil service clerks, in normal times, is at least fifty per cent higher than the same grade of service commands in the business world. The question resolves itself therefore into this proposition: Shall those who have secured government positions and held them for thirty years, when there have been thirty thousand other citizens equally patriotic, and equally competent, who have sought government employment in vain, be rewarded and pensioned because of their good fortune, and at the expense of their less favored brothers and sisters?

The same argument applies to old age pensions. Most red-blooded Americans are willing to assume responsibility for the support of themselves and their families, and gladly contribute in some fair and equitable manner, through appropriate processes of taxation, towards pensioning those who bear arms in defense of our common flag, and for the dignity of our country, and they are also willing to pay their share towards the maintenance of the helpless and the unfortunate few. But it is no evidence of yellow that some object to the burden of paying pensions to men and women who have no other claim thereto than that they have grown old and have failed to provide for themselves.

Take the case home and apply it to yourself and your family. Do you desire the government to promise you and your children a pension independent of the manner in which you and they acquit yourselves? Or would you prefer to face the future in the belief that if you win, through merit, the rewards of victory will be yours to enjoy, and if you lose you will be expected to suffer the consequences. In other words do you desire the government to pension you simply because you hold a poor hand or play a good hand badly? What effect do you think the promise of old age pension would have upon the rising generation? Is not the youth of America already sufficiently wanting in self-reliance?

The only other way thus far proposed by which the government shall support its employees in old age, is by means of guardianship. This plan seems to proceed upon the theory that those who are fortunate enough to secure government positions, are necessarily unable to look after their own affairs, and therefore are entitled to a guardian. The proposition is that the government shall take charge of a portion of the earnings of this favored set of American citizens—withhold part of their salary and deal it out to them as a mother does candy to her baby lest it overeat or consume it too soon. It is a pretty weak citizen who needs a guardian, and those who do—provided they are compos mentis and fourteen years of age—are entitled under the laws of most states to select their own.

Five years’ experience led me to recognize that new clerks as a rule are better than old ones. Those who come with any enthusiasm whatever make very rapid advancement in efficiency, but in a very few years the enthusiasm vanishes and hope of advancement is based entirely on seniority of service.

Before leaving the Department I recommended—and am now more convinced than ever of its wisdom—that government positions should be filled, as now, under the rules of Civil Service but that all new clerks should come facing a statute limiting the periods of their service to five years. Five years of government service, especially in the city of Washington, is in itself an education. In addition there are excellent night schools where clerks can and do pursue their studies. Before Civil Service was inaugurated thousands secured appointments in Washington, graduated in law or medicine and went forth familiar with the official atmosphere and prepared to give the lie to those in every town who teach that the Capitol of the Nation is a den of thieves. John W. Gates got his start in life as a sixty dollar per month clerk in the Post Office Department and spent his evenings writing letters for Senator John A. Logan, and meeting the big men of the nation who called.

A limited period in college is of great advantage but it would ruin any boy to keep him year after year in the same classes, going over the same subjects, reciting to the same tutors, getting nothing new and all the while segregated from all practical things of life. Why give these plums of official position—and they are no less plums because secured under Civil Service—to young men and women for life when they might be passed around with great advantage to that larger body of equally deserving citizens who would be benefited by a brief experience in public service.

The present force should be permitted to complete the tenor of their natural lives in the service. The new rule if adopted should apply only to those taken on after the enactment of the law limiting the period of service to five years. Exceptions would have to be made in cases requiring technical, professional or scientific knowledge. Provision would also have to be made whereby by executive order, on the recommendation of heads of departments, the specially competent could be retained.