Publications: Massachusetts Merit System Reporter: Volume 10, issue 2: pages 160-163

A Famous Lecture

After Richard Henry Dana became famous from his account of working in California in Two Years Before the Mast, he was a prominent lawyer in Boston, active in many reform causes. This is an address he gave before the Women's Auxiliary of the Massachusetts Civil Service Reform Association, and then published as a booklet now in the Boston Public Library, dated March 29, 1907. Much of this speech could be given today.

Civil Service Reform

   I have been asked to give in detail the work still to be done for Civil Service Reform and suggest how women can aid in its accomplishment. The work consists chiefly in repelling attacks on reform and in perfecting and extending it.

   In Massachusetts, the attacks of late years have been in the form of bills brought before the Legislature; first, for the repeal of the law either wholly or as applied to the city of Boston; second, to substitute pa ss-exami nations for open, competitive examinations; and third, to extend to the ex-soldiers of the Spanish War the exemptions and preferences now granted to the veterans of tile Civil War only; and, in general, to ridicule the system and discourage persons from entering the examinations.

   The attack in the way of repeals is direct and plain, the others are indirect and not so self-evident.

   A pass-examination is a mere counterfeit of the reform. The reform is aimed chiefly at the political "boss." It seeks to deprive him of his patronage by limiting the appointments in the Civil Service to those who stand highest as tile result of competitive tests of fitness open to all persons of good character. The pass-system allows any one to be appointed who can pass the examination required for the position sought, thus giving back to the "boss" his control over the offices, with the very slight limitation that he cannot appoint persons absolutely incompetent. The system of pass-exami nations was tried in the fifties in this country. It satisfied neither the reformers nor the bosses. It was not worth the candle and was abandoned.

   The privileges accorded to Veterans of the Civil War are of two kinds; the first exempts those veterans altogether from the Civil Service Law and allows their appointment without any examination whatever. This puts the veterans into politics for any and ail offices which they get as a matter of favor or party reward, and this gives just so much patronage and political power into the hands of any wouldbe "boss." The second provides that all veterans who may pass any of the examinations "shall be preferred" in appointment before all others who have passed similar examinations, no matter how much more competent these others may have shown themselves.

   The Civil War veteran exemptions and excessive preferences should be repealed and reduced to a "Preference, other things being equal," and to a few other minor privileges helpful to the veterans but harmless to the reform. [161]

   As the law stands, these exemptions and preferences form the chief obstacle to the successful operation of the law and discourage its extension. The exemption measure received the veto of Governor Robinson and the preference plan that of Governor Greenhalge. One argument for granting these privileges to the veterans of the Civil War, some twenty-five and thirty years after that war was ended, was that these veterans "were not long to be with us". If, however, such special privileges are extended to young soldiers of the recent and short Spanish War, this becomes a precedent to be applied to all men enlisted in the times of the Philippine, Indian or other wars, and the evils will be perpetuated.

   This repeal can be accomplished, if at all, only through the veterans themselves. Some of their leaders are already with us. The men are patriotic, and, if appealed to by some of their own members at next year's annual encampment, on the ground of helping to put down the rule of the party "boss" and of purifying the politics of the country they fought to save, they might pass a favorable resolution which would at once assure the object we have in mind and add new honor to the veterans themselves. The proposed extension was vetoed in 1899 by Governor Wolcott and was defeated in the State Senate in 1890.

   Politicians, especially in the cities, seek to discourage people from entering the examinations by saying that none can be appointed without a political "pull." The more they succeed in keeping others away, the more they can confine the eligible lists to their followers, and thus make true what otherwise would be false.

   For perfecting the law as it now stands, we wish to give the Civil Service Commission more power to enforce the law by withholding the salaries of those illegally appointed. The proposed measure is the joint work of the Massachusetts Civil Service Reform Association, the Civil Service Commission and the Attorney General, and has the approval of all three. The women in Massachusetts can do much in a quiet way to further this plan.

   We wish to extend the civil service reform law to the numerous county offices to which it does not extend. Its need, both in the county departments and in county politics, is very greatly felt. The law should also be extended to the legislative officials, to truant officers, treasury employees, and many other positions now exempted. In the Federal service we want to secure for the National Civil Service Commission the same powers to enforce the law that we are now trying to get for our State commission. We want to have the eight thousand positions taken out of the open competitive system put back; the weakened rules of May 29, 1899, by which so many back-door entrances to the service were opened, amended, so as to close and securely lock those back doors; and then to have the law and rules, thus duly strengthened, still further extended; and to take the seventy-five thousand postmasters out of politics by putting them under some regulated system of appointment and promotion. The reform methods should also be applied to the civil service of every city, county and state of the Union.

   How can the Women's Auxiliary give practical assistance in this work? First: Let me say by giving their appreciation and sympathy to those who have so long worked in this cause. We have had to bear both ridicule and indifference in the past. 1, for one, -and I believe all the rest of us love appreciation, -and the sympathy of our women friends is a great incentive, alone worth the effort of your organization. You can give an outward visible manifestation of your sympathy by having some of your number present at the more important committee hearings at the State House, as was done with such good results last year.

   Besides bestowing appreciation and sympathy, you can collectively create addi [162] tional public opinion by holding meetings for addresses and discussion, and also individually, by word, by social and family influence, you can spread tile good gospel, not forgetting to sow the seed at your summer homes, where you will find many unplanted fields. Your organization should be extended, whether through the women's clubs with which you are affiliated, or by the enlargement of your own membership, so as to include women in every considerable town and city in the state. Petitions you can sign and circulate for others to sign, and you can write or see your member of Congress or state legislator, which methods will be all tile more affective as your organization, in some form or other, is spread more largely over the state; and don't forget to thank your representatives for any good work done. The late Sherman Hoar, not long before his death, said to a large body of distinguished men, that for all the hard work ha had done in Congress for good causes popular with our best citizens, he had received only two letters of thanks. "You don't know," he added, "how it helps one, to receive such letters." Not only can you women influence the grown men, whether politicians, or in the Grand Army of the Republic, or simply as voters, but you can predispose the young men to take interest in this cause.

   To do all this with good results you must be able to answer the popular plausible fallacies urged against the reform. One of these is that the head of an office could, if left to himself, make better appointments than he gets through the Civil Service Commission. Even if left to himself, I doubt if this is true in the large offices with thousands of employees. The railroads of the country are adopting civil service reform methods for selecting many of their employees, as a pure business proposition. A recent number of Harper's Weekly gives a full account of the tests, both educational and physical, employed by the Metropolitan Railroad Company for the appointment of its motormen. The Boston Elevated Railway has adopted a system very much of the same sort.

   Even for a small office a well advertised open competition discloses capable persons not before known to the appointing officer. Two illustrations of this have occurred very recently in Washington. In each case a head of a scientific bureau thought he knew the only one or two persons in the country capable of performing the work, but others appeared and passed such good examinations that the appointing officer was satisfied that they were better suited than the persons he had had in mind before. Apart from this discovery of unknown material, as a rule, I will admit that for certain kinds of employment, in a small bureau, an honest and efficient official could often get as good and better service, if left to make the selection himself, but in the absence of civil service reform regulations he is not left to make the selection himself. He has to take those sent him by the political powers that be. Witness the report published early in March, 1901, by the special committee of Congress on the demoralized condition of the House and Senate employees. These are not under civil service rules. The head officials who are supposed to appoint and be responsible for those under them openly declared, what everyone knows to be the truth, that they were not free to select but had to obey the dictation of the members of Congress, and could not even maintain discipline on account of this constant interference in appointments, removals and office regulations. As practical people we must deal, not with an imaginary condition that has no objective reality, but with the actual alternative that must exist.

   Another fallacy is the pass-examination substitute for the open competitive system that I have already explained.

   Again, there is the objection that the reform keeps inefficient men in the [163] offices. The reform guards only the entrance to the service. There is no part of the rules or laws that prevents removals for inefficiency or incapacity, while under the spoils system, incompetent, insubordinate and even drunken employees frequently could not be dismissed on account of powerful political backing, so that, in reality, it is usually easier to make removals for good cause in that part of the Civil Service where the employees stand on their own merits than in that part remaining under the old system of political "pull."

   Complaint is sometimes made that the examinations are not of practical nature and are calculated to keep out competent applicants. Let me strongly advise following up every such complaint. Get the name of the candidate, find out what kind of examination he took, ascertain the duties of the person sought, go to the Civil Service Commission, who are obliged by law to preserve all the questions and answers and inspect those in the case complained of. I have done this several times, and always with the most satisfactory results, and on each occasion increasing my confidence in the reform methods. In the British Parliament some yeas [sic] ago a member loudly complained in debate that his son had failed in history in his civil service examination for one of the higher positions where a knowledge of history was required. He said he could assure the members that his son was an able historical scholar, and there must have been unfairness in the examination. At a subsequent session the ministry produced the papers and read one question and answer that ended the complaint. The question was, "Who is Oliver Cromwell?" The reply was: "The man who said, 'Had I served my God as I have served my King, he would not in my age have left me desolate."'

   Many office seekers have such exalted ideas of their own ability that they lay the blame of any failure on the examinations. one man some years ago asked me to recommend him for public office. I inquired of him for what employment lie thought he was specially fitted. "Oh," he replied, "there is no trouble about that, write me a recommendation as fitted to the duties of any office that may happen to be vacant."

   The questions of the height of the Alps, the mouth of the Ganges, or the distance of the moon from Earth are not asked in the examination for letter carriers or clerks. And there are as many different kinds of examinations as there are kinds of work to be done, while the positions requiring executive ability are usually filled by promotion from among those employees who have shown such ability in lower places.

   Lastly, let me ask you to put some enthusiasm into your work for this cause, for this cause is not on the surface of things; it is not a mere question of a more efficient and economical Civil Service. It is an attack on the underlying causes of bossism and all its attendant evils in our political and municipal life. It goes to the very foundations of representative government. Being convinced of this, you cannot choose but be yourselves convincing. Ten persons with a conviction are worth a thousand with an opinion. If, then, women would join with us in this great work, I see the chance of recovering all the ground recently lost, and of acquiring new fields, until the whole land is ours; and thus we shall put American politics not, to be sure, where it will run itself without attention, but where honest, high-minded, intellectual and educated citizens can, by reasonable effort, have their due weight in the destinies of the country, and no longer stay helplessly on the short arm of the lever of the political machine.

R.H. Dana