z 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 
 
 AND 
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 PAPERS 
 
 PREPARED FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING OF 
 
 The National Civil-Service Reform League 
 
 CINCINNATI, OHIO, DECEMBER 17, 1897, 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT SHAW 
 
 AND 
 
 HORACE E. DEMING. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE 
 
 NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE. 
 i8 97- 
 
Publications of the national Civil-Service Reform League 
 
 Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil-Ser¬ 
 vice .Reform League, 1882, with address of the President, George 
 William Curtis. Per copy, 8 cts. 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
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 University of Illinois. 
 
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 The Influence of the Spoils Idea upon the Government of 
 American Cities. By Herbert Welsh. (1894.) 
 
 The Reform of the Consular Service. By Oscar S. Straus. (1894.) 
 The Interest of the Workingman in Civil-Service Reform. By 
 
 Herbert Welsh. (1895.) 
 
 T^ie Appointment and Tenure of Postmasters. By R. H. Dana. 
 
 (1895.) 
 
 The Republican Party and Civil-Service Reform. By Henry 
 
 Hitchcock. (1897.) 
 
 The Democratic Party and Civil-Service Reform. By Moorfield 
 
 Storey. (1897.) 
 
 An open Letter to Hon. C. H. Grosvenor, in reply to recent at¬ 
 tacks on the Civil Service Law and Rules. George McAneny. 
 (1897.) 
 
 Constitution of the National Civil-Service Reform League. 
 
 Good Government: Official Journal of the National Civil-Service 1 
 Reform League. Published monthly at 54 William St., New York. J 
 One dollar per year. Ten cents per single copy. 
 
 
 For other publications, see third page 
 
OAKST.HDSF ! j A *'•’ 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM^ - 
 
 AND 
 
 I IP > ■> O 1 
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 PAPERS 
 
 PREPARED FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING OF 
 
 The National Civil-Service Reform League 
 
 CINCINNATI, OHIO, DECEMBER 17, 1897, 
 
 ALBERT SHAW 
 
 AND 
 
 HORACE E. DEMING. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED KOR THE 
 
 NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE. 
 i8 97- 
 
■ C C o « 
 C C « c 
 
Civil Service Reform and Municipal-Gd^erii" : 
 
 ment. 
 
 FIRST PAPER. 
 
 By Albert Shaw. 
 
 We have been talking much in this country of 
 Municipal Reform ; and that phrase, when applied to 
 existing conditions in various cities, embraces obviously, 
 a great range and diversity of specific needs. But it is 
 well for us that we should understand clearly that, in 
 the present stage of our progress, Municipal Reform 
 means before all else civil service reform, and that the 
 abolition of the personal and party spoils system from 
 our municipal administrations is the one and only 
 remedy for the worst of our present evils in city govern¬ 
 ment. 
 
 Good government in itself is a fit and desirable 
 thing, and patriotism demands it ; for how can the 
 citizen love his country as he ought if its administra¬ 
 tion is habitually corrupt and inefficient, and if there is 
 altogether lacking in the exercise of public authority 
 the attributes of disinterestedness, of dignity, and of 
 equal beneficence towards all citizens, regardless of 
 party, race, or other distinction ? Nevertheless, while 
 I do not fail to appreciate the fitness and the moral 
 beauty of good government as an abstract considera¬ 
 tion, I have always, in the application of government 
 to local and municipal affairs, preferred to think of 
 government as a means to an end rather than an object 
 in itself. 
 
 Municipal government in our day has come to be 
 Collectivism, on a vast and ever more diversified scale. 
 I am familiar with the abstract discussions, current 
 
 
4 
 
 nowadays* dealing with the question whether or not 
 / invni^jpal government may be rightly termed a matter 
 r of -basinets. These discussions deal only with defini¬ 
 
 tions. They play with words and phrases. I am not 
 able to see that they bear upon the real work that we 
 have before us in this country. 
 
 Nor do I see anything practical to be gained at 
 present by arguments, either for or against the extension 
 of the working functions of municipal government in 
 the direction of local Collectivism, or, as some people 
 prefer to put it, Socialism. The principles of municipal 
 collectivism were established long ago. What we have 
 to deal with now is the practical working out of those 
 principles in concrete instances, as such instances 
 arise. 
 
 Inasmuch as we are not going to revive the system 
 of private wells and town pumps, but are universally 
 committed in all enlightened cities to a public water 
 supply, it clearly behooves us to see that the public 
 supply is procured and distributed upon the best possible 
 engineering, financial, and sanitary principles. Inas¬ 
 much as we have no intention of going back in this 
 country to the very recent period of private cesspools 
 and open drains, it behooves us to deal in the most 
 enlightened way with the problem of drainage, to the 
 end that the sewer system may perfectly fit the local 
 situation, and that the ultimate sewage disposal may 
 meet the requirements of sanitary science, with a due 
 regard to the economic principles involved. Since good 
 streets, well made and well kept, are a public necessity, 
 and we have no intention of relapsing to primitive con¬ 
 ditions in that respect, it plainly devolves upon us to 
 make the paving as good and as durable as engineering 
 experience can devise, and to clean the streets as 
 perfectly as the health and comfort of the community 
 would require. Inasmuch as we do not intend to revert 
 to the period when vagrancy, common begging, street 
 rowdyism, and a great variety of ordinary nuisances and 
 minor misdemeanors were freely tolerated as a matter 
 of course, but on the contrary do intend to maintain 
 
s 
 
 conditions of order, decency, and safety throughout the 
 bounds of the community, it needs no argument to show 
 that we ought to avail ourselves of the best possible 
 methods in the organization and management of the 
 police service, and of the establishments that have to do 
 with the detention and correction of offenders and with 
 the relief of distress. Since, furthermore, we have 
 long ago accepted the principle that it is both the right 
 and the duty of the community to make provision for 
 the instruction of all children, to the end that our 
 average standards of civilization may not decline in the 
 process of transmission from one generation to the next, 
 it is plain enough that our public schools ought to be 
 as good as they can possibly be made, and that their 
 methods ought, from time to time, to be adjusted to 
 meet the new needs of a changing situation. 
 
 These statements are the merest commonplace. The 
 man who in our day would argue against good water, 
 good drainage, good streets and good schools, as proper 
 things for a community to secure by collective action, 
 would be looked upon as a mere anachronism, or else as 
 an after-dinner theorizer whose views have nothing to 
 do with those practical concerns that belong to the 
 working hours of the day. 
 
 And yet, while everybody believes that these things 
 belong to what may be called the irreducible minimum 
 of a modern city’s public necessities, how many of our 
 cities actually possess them ? Certainly not many. If 
 the water supply suffices in quantity, in too many 
 instances it falls short in quality. If the ramification of 
 sewers is sufficient to collect liquid waste, it too 
 frequently happens that proper provision is not made 
 for the disposal of sewage. If the street system is 
 judiciously laid out, it is seldom the case that good 
 paving extends beyond a few streets, or that there is 
 any efficient system for keeping the streets clean. If 
 the school houses provide places enough for the child¬ 
 ren who ought to attend, which is not the case in the 
 great majority of our large towns, it is seldom that 
 the system or the methods of instruction come any- 
 
6 
 
 where near meeting the proper demands of the present 
 day. 
 
 Now I am well aware that I have sometimes been 
 accused of presenting an unduly favorable view of con¬ 
 temporary conditions in European cities. I have only 
 to reply that what I have said about cities abroad is in 
 plain print and is true. In many things that belong to 
 the functions of the modern city, most of the European 
 towns are relatively in advance of our own. Nor is it 
 true that the better municipal appointments of European 
 cities are to be attributed either to their greater age or 
 to their superior wealth ; for they are not so rich as our 
 cities by any means, nor, considered as modern urban 
 communities, are they any older. All cities of the 
 modern type belong to the existing regime of steam 
 transportation and industry. For all purposes that 
 municipal administration has now to concern itself with, 
 the modern city is nowhere fifty years old. Considered 
 as a great urban centre, Chicago is of about the same 
 age as Berlin ; and Boston, New York and Baltimore 
 are as old as Glasgow, London and Hamburg. Con¬ 
 sidered for purposes of modern improvements, Cincin¬ 
 nati, for example, is as old as any city of its size in 
 Europe, and richer than almost any that could be 
 named. 
 
 Why, then, to cut short these comparisons, have 
 European cities accomplished more than our own in 
 these practical, concrete directions ? I have thought 
 about the matter a good deal, and have investigated it 
 very considerably, studying home conditions quite as 
 carefully as I have those abroad, although I have 
 written more about European cities. And I have 
 reached one firm conclusion, which is that with any¬ 
 thing like as good administration in this country as in 
 Europe, we should have been not simply as far advanced 
 in our municipal appointments, but vastly further 
 advanced than the European cities, because all the 
 material conditions have been so much more favorable 
 in our own country. 
 
 We have done many things extremely well in this 
 
7 
 
 country, for the reason that private initiative possesses 
 intense energy and high efficiency. And it has 
 happened once in a while, by a stroke of luck, that some 
 department of public administration has for the moment 
 borrowed the personal resources of private enterprise. 
 Now, it happens that in England, France and Ger¬ 
 many, municipal work is carried on under a system 
 which normally gives the public the benefit of the best 
 efforts of the best trained men. With us, public work is 
 carried on under a system which normally gives the 
 public something less than the best efforts of men who 
 average far below the best. 
 
 Previous to 1890, New York had spent vastly more ^ 
 money for street paving than any city of comparable 
 size or conditions in Europe ; and yet New York had 
 only one or two well-paved streets. And this is typical. 
 
 No language can well exaggerate the frightful losses 
 that American communities have suffered in the thirty 
 years since the civil war through bad administration. 
 Thousands of millions of dollars would only begin to 
 express the tangible losses. And I hold the spoils 
 annex of the American party system as chiefly respon¬ 
 sible for this waste of resources and of opportunities. y. 
 
 Certain American visitors, who have recently taken 
 a glance here and there at politics in Europe, have come 
 home to sneer at the demands of those in this country 
 who advocate administrative reform in our cities and 
 who sometimes cite European experiences as affording 
 instructive lessons. These scornful personages have in 
 their turn sought to convince the people ©f this country 
 that partisanship prevails in precisely the same way in 
 European cities, and particularly in those of England, 
 as we have been accustomed to see partisanship prevail 
 in our American cities. 
 
 I absolutely deny that this is true. It is true, that,— 
 to an extent which would seem to me to be unfortunate, 
 
 —the annual elections, which fill one-third of the seats in 
 the municipal councils of England have recently been 
 fought to an increasing extent upon the Liberal and 
 Conservative lines of the national parties. Neverthe- 
 
8 
 
 less, it is worthwhile here to observe that in the recent 
 elections held on November ist, there were as usual a 
 very great number of non-contested seats, which simply 
 means that the councilman for a given ward, regardless 
 of his preferences in national politics, had served his 
 constituents in local matters so well that nobody opposed 
 his re-election for another term ; and thus his unopposed 
 nomination gave him another three years of office with¬ 
 out the expense or trouble of holding an election in his 
 ward. The revolt of the Liberal Unionists in England, 
 which made an intense feeling between the Gladstonians 
 and the followers of Mr. Chamberlain, was to a con¬ 
 siderable extent responsible for the infusion of national 
 politics in the municipal elections. But even in Birm¬ 
 ingham, where these November elections for the town 
 council have often been most stubbornly contested, I 
 have not been able to discover that there is the slightest 
 taint of partisanship in appointments, or in the practical 
 work of administration. 
 
 In one-fourth of these English municipalities holding 
 their regular elections last November, the polls were 
 not opened in a single ward, for the reason that only one 
 candidate was presented in each division. In the 
 remaining three-fourths of the English municipal 
 corporations there were also of course a great number 
 of uncontested wards. In many instances where con¬ 
 tests did occur, it is true (as I have taken pains to 
 ascertain), that there was no question of party politics 
 involved, but only local or personal questions. 
 
 In Liverpool, on the other hand, the fight was a 
 very spirited one on party lines, although even there in 
 seven wards, one-fourth of the whole number, no con¬ 
 test was made. It happens that just now the advanced 
 Liberals in England are trying in every way to show 
 that the tide of national feeling is turning against the 
 existing Tory government. For this reason the Liver¬ 
 pool Radicals contested nineteen Conservative council 
 seats. But in eighteen cases out of the nineteen, the 
 public preferred to endorse things as they were rather 
 than to make a change. 
 
9 
 
 In another English town, every one of thd retiring 
 members was a candidate for re-election, and every one 
 of them was defeated; but this was because public 
 opinion was in favor of a new municipal water supply, 
 and elected new men who were committed to the desired 
 policy. In the great town of Sheffield there were con¬ 
 tests in only two wards. But the great and significant 
 point that I wish to enforce is that in not one of all 
 these English towns was there involved, even incident¬ 
 ally, the idea that the result could in any wise affect the 
 appointive offices, either for or against members of any 
 political party. 
 
 If the chief of police, the superintendent of water 
 supply, the head of the public library, the superinten¬ 
 dent of the municipal gas works, the manager of the 
 great sewage disposal establishment, or any other of 
 the principal working heads of departments, should 
 resign, it is almost inconceivable that the party results 
 of an election for the municipal council would have the 
 slightest effect upon the appointment of a successor to 
 such a department head. Far less is it conceivable that 
 the victory of one party or the other in a municipal 
 election should result in the removal of an efficient head 
 of a department for the sake of giving the place, for 
 partisan or personal reasons, to someone connected with 
 the victorious element. It is absolutely agreed on all 
 hands in England that the discretionary heads of 
 administrative municipal departments shall be selected 
 for their fitness, regardless of their party affiliations, 
 and that they shall be retained so long as their conduct 
 is good and their services are efficient. And if this is 
 true of heads of departments, it is hardly necessary to 
 add that it is also true of the entire ramification of 
 subordinate appointments. 
 
 So far as practical every-day administration is con¬ 
 cerned, a large part of the difference between the 
 English municipal system and the system established 
 by the new charter of the Greater New York lies in the 
 fact that in England the municipal council exercises 
 the appointing power, while in New York the appoint- 
 
« ‘ ' * r r 
 
 ^ng^ fe exercised by the mayor. The working 
 
 hdnlifilstfation is carried on in England by a number of 
 appointed heads of departments, and the same thing 
 may be said of the government of the Greater New 
 York. In England those heads of departments are 
 chosen by the municipal council, working through its 
 committees. In New York they are to be chosen by 
 the mayor. If the very large Tory majority in the Liver¬ 
 pool municipal council should decide to dismiss existing 
 heads of departments in order to appoint Tories to 
 succeed them,—selected on the New York plan with 
 special reference to private and personal as well as 
 political affiliations,—such an act would involve a 
 greater change in the actual system of government in 
 England than would be involved in changing the con¬ 
 stitutional monarchy to an absolute monarchy like that 
 of Russia. The repudiation of a non-partisan civil 
 service on purely business principles under the merit 
 system, would signify a change incomparably more vital 
 than any possible variations in the mere outward struc¬ 
 ture of municipal government,—such for instance as 
 appear when one compares the typical English muni¬ 
 cipal system with the French, the German, or even that 
 which the Greater New York Charter provides. 
 
 Further than that, the making of partisan appoint¬ 
 ments to office would be deemed in English towns not 
 merely a blow at the efficiency of administration, but 
 also a violation of every principle of civic justice and 
 equality, a proscription of half the tax-paying com¬ 
 munity by the governing authorities,—in short, an act 
 of hostility, which carried on to its logical end would 
 mean the denial of civic rights to all citizens not adher¬ 
 ing to a single political party, or, in a word, civil war. 
 At least the sharp drawing of political lines in muni¬ 
 cipal appointments in England would now be deemed 
 by public opinion to be practically as objectionable as 
 political discrimination in courts of justice, or as the 
 exemption from taxation of all the adherents of the 
 party in power. And the same thing may be said con¬ 
 cerning the generally excellent public service that 
 
one finds in French, German, and other continental 
 cities. 
 
 When therefore American politicians return from 
 their brief vacations in Europe to tell us that they find 
 party lines recognized in municipal elections abroad, 
 they have told us only a very limited part of the truth. 
 There is no such thing in England, or France, or 
 Germany, as a partisan management of municipal public 
 works. I have known such a thing in an American 
 city as ninety-nine per cent, of the common labor 
 employed (to an extent of hundreds of workmen on 
 streets and other public work), adhering not only to the 
 national party, but also to the local faction of the party 
 that held the reins of municipal power for the time 
 being. And I have known, as everyone else in this 7 ^ 
 country has, of more than one city where at least nine- 
 tenths of the public appointees holding positions requir¬ 
 ing skill or the exercise of discretion have also been 
 filled in the same way by the henchmen of a political 
 boss or faction. 
 
 As our civilization advances further, and as the 
 necessary functions of a municipal government become 
 more varied and elaborate, this American system of 
 partisanship in appointments becomes more and more 
 intolerable. Favoritism to the extent of a partisan 
 appointment or two in the health service may mean a 
 great epidemic, with paralysis of business as well as 
 loss of life, where the European system of non-partisan¬ 
 ship would have meant perfect safety. 
 
 Just now there is much agitation throughout the 
 United States touching the question of the proper regu¬ 
 lation in the general interest of such quasi-public 
 services as the supply of illumination and the provision 
 of transit facilities. One hears the advocacy of public 
 ownership even in strange and unexpected quarters. 
 
 The workingmen of the City of New York have of late 
 especially identified themselves with the demand for a 
 great extension of the functions of municipal govern¬ 
 ment. Yet they have elected as mayor, a gentleman 
 who approached the assumption of his official duties 
 
12 
 
 with the one bold and unqualified announcement that 
 nobody could even be considered for an appointment, 
 unless he belonged to the Democratic party,—by which 
 he meant Tammany Hall and its affiliated organiza¬ 
 tions. Surely the workingmen of New York ought to 
 have intelligence enough to understand that a non¬ 
 partisan administration, based strictly upon reasonable 
 assurances of long tenure and of promotion on principles 
 of fitness, must be the sine qua non of any successful 
 extension of municipal functions. 
 
 They have learned something of successful experi¬ 
 ments abroad in the municipalization of lighting sup¬ 
 plies, and even of street railroads; and they are clamor¬ 
 ing for a radical advance in such directions by our 
 American cities. But if they care for these things they 
 should have learned also that there is no partisanship in 
 Glasgow’s municipal transit,—which has been made suc¬ 
 cessful through the meritorious labors of Mr. John 
 Young precisely as street-cleaning in New York has been 
 made successful through the meritorious labors of 
 Colonel Waring. 
 
 How has it happened that a place like Glasgow has 
 proceeded to increase the range of its important munici¬ 
 pal activities? The answer is perfectly plain. That 
 city was emboldened to try new ventures because its 
 non-partisan administration of earlier ones had been 
 thoroughly satisfactory. John Young had been the 
 Colonel Waring of Glasgow for a good many years. 
 That is to say, he had been superintendent of the cleans¬ 
 ing department, and had worked out and administered 
 a remarkably perfect system for the cleansing of the 
 streets and the collection and disposal of garbage. If 
 anybody knows John Young’s politics, certainly nobody 
 cares. He has been allowed to organize and manage 
 the municipal street railway service on strict business 
 principles, and has promptly made a success of it— 
 precisely as Colonel Waring, if commissioned to organ- 
 ize and manage a municipal lighting service, or a transit 
 service, would have no difficulty in carrying the matter 
 out as successfully as any like services elsewhere. 
 
1/ 
 
 r 3 
 
 If the workingmen of New York had really wanted 
 to take the short cut to enlarged municipal ownership 
 and operation, they ought to have voted for Seth Low, 
 for the simple reason that Seth Low was pledged to 
 organize a municipal administration on strict business 
 principles, free from the taint of politics, precisely as 
 Glasgow or Berlin is organized. Tammany, in its 
 latest platform, professes to have become converted to 
 the principles of enlarged municipal ownership of 
 natural monopolies of supply. But in the very same 
 breath Tammany informs us that a municipal lighting 
 plant, for instance, if established in New York, shall 
 not be managed by a man selected solely for his fitness 
 to manage such a business, but must be managed in any 
 case by a politician belonging to Tammany Hall. 
 
 Nothing more ignominious in all the history of 
 American municipal government has ever been wit¬ 
 nessed than the recent confession on the part of the city 
 government of Philadelphia that it was incompetent 
 to manage the lighting supply, and its transfer by lease 
 for a long term of years of the municipal gas plant to a 
 private corporation. Nearly every large city in Europe 
 conducts the business of supplying light as a municipal 
 department. Under any ordinary decent system of 
 administration, there is probably no department of 
 municipal business so simple in its nature and so per¬ 
 fectly easy to finance and to administer as a gas supply. 
 The European cities have been conspicuously successful 
 in this particular branch of their municipal business. 
 They have justified the experiment of the municipaliza¬ 
 tion of lighting supplies by making the venture finan¬ 
 cially beneficial to the public treasury, by greatly 
 improving the public lighting of the streets, and above 
 all by a greatly diffused and cheapened supply to 
 private citizens. Where European cities have been so > 
 successful Philadelphia has confessed failure; and the 
 sole reason lies in the fact that the party spoils system, 
 rather than the merit system, has dominated the city 
 government. S? 
 
 The police, the fire department, the care of the 
 
14 
 
 streets, the erection of public works, the water supply, 
 the sanitary services, and all the varied practical busi¬ 
 ness of carrying on a modern city,—these are not 
 properly matters of party politics. Such public interests 
 should, in their every-day working, be as free from the 
 bias of partisan politics as the administration of justice. 
 Most people in this country admit that school teachers 
 ought not to be appointed for party reasons ; and we 
 shall in time come to see with perfect clearness that all 
 other departments of local administration, not less than 
 the schools, must for efficiency’s sake be put on the 
 basis of pure merit. When that time arrives it will be 
 safe for the municipality to extend its functions, if such 
 extension should seem desirable. 
 
 But on the other hand it might then appear to make 
 very much less difference. For example, I do not find 
 that in a German city it signifies much one way or the 
 other whether the municipal government itself provides 
 an electrical plant and runs it, or gives a charter to a 
 private company. This is because in Germany the 
 municipal governments are efficient enough to take full 
 care of the rights of citizens. And so, if a private com¬ 
 pany is to manage the electrical supply, it will proceed 
 under the terms of a franchise that exacts everything 
 that is right, both for the municipal treasury and also 
 for the private user of electric light or power. But 
 where, as in this country, municipal administration is 
 on a party basis, and the party is locally controlled by a 
 clique or a boss, there is no one who is looking out 
 efficiently for the rights of the city or of the citizens. The 
 corporation seeking a franchise is looking out for its own 
 interests, and the politicians in control of the municipal 
 situation are looking out for themselves and their party 
 machine. The consequence is that the city and the 
 citizens are usually betrayed. Those who ought to 
 serve the community are traitors to it. The treasury 
 of the city goes empty, while the treasury of the party 
 machine is enriched. In Europe, with permanent non¬ 
 partisan administrative and law officers in positions of 
 authority, franchises are always carefully drawn in the 
 
*5 
 
 interest of the public, and it is practically impossible for 
 a private corporation to obtain any public privilege that 
 is not paid for at its full worth. Under our system, on 
 the contrary, the party spoils administration breaks 
 down public ownership as in Philadelphia, and makes it 
 easy for private ownership to rob the community of 
 valuable franchises, as in New York. 
 
 In conclusion of the whole matter, 'it would seem to 
 me that all honest citizens,—whatever their point of view 
 regarding such questions as public ownership or the 
 extension of municipal functions,—ought to be able to 
 unite upon the indispensable prerequisite of administra¬ 
 tion upon business principles, whether the work of the 
 municipality is to be enlarged or whether it is to be 
 diminished. A more practical issue cannot be named. 
 And so long as the existing political parties decline to 
 accept the principle of non-partisanship in the making 
 of municipal appointments and the carrying on of 
 municipal business, there will of necessity be a field for 
 independent action in city elections. When, as in Eng¬ 
 land or on the European continent, our political parties 
 shall have abandoned the local spoils system frankly and 
 in good faith, they may strive for victory in municipal 
 campaigns as much as they please and without 
 reproach. 
 
 SECOND PAPER. 
 
 By Horace E. Deming. 
 
 Political partisanship may properly be roused to most in¬ 
 tense activity in determining whether there shall be high tariff 
 or low tariff, protection with incidental revenue or revenue 
 with incidental protection; but there is no proper place for 
 political partisanship in collecting the revenue honestly. The 
 country may be storm swept by the contending political poli¬ 
 cies of the single gold standard and a dual gold and silver 
 standard at a fixed ratio; but whichever policy wins the work 
 
16 
 
 at the government mint demands not political partisanship, 
 however pure or however intense, but plain every day honest 
 work for honest wage. 
 
 A wide gulf lies between questions of public policy on 
 which men divide into opposing political parties and questions 
 that involve merely the honest and efficient administration of 
 public business. Civil Service Reform has nothing to do with 
 the former questions. It does not concern itself with them. 
 With questions of administration it does and must concern it¬ 
 self until all appointments to government positions having 
 nothing to do with determining questions of public policy on 
 which men divide into political parties are made solely for 
 merit and fitness without regard to any partisan political con¬ 
 siderations whatsoever. 
 
 In short, civil service reform is an administrative reform, 
 not a political reform. It seeks to exclude “ politics ” alto¬ 
 gether from the business-side of the government’s operations. 
 Civil service reform means that all employees of the govern¬ 
 ment having merely to do with matters of administration shall 
 be appointed, shall hold their places, and shall be discharged 
 not because they or their sponsors have or have not done po¬ 
 litical party service but because the employee is personally fit 
 or unfit for his position. 
 
 This principle is aptly called the merit principle. How far 
 is it an important factor in the solution of the problem of 
 municipal government ? To those who have investigated the 
 nature of the municipal problem the answer is almost too self 
 evident. To others it may be of service to be reminded for a 
 moment how some of the chief activities of a municipality, 
 those which concern most intimately the daily life of its citi¬ 
 zens, have come into existence. 
 
 When a trail has become a cartroad the cartroad a high¬ 
 way, the highway a constantly traveled and closely thronged 
 city street, the proper maintenance and care of the latter is an 
 administrative problem of the greatest importance to scores of 
 thousands and it may be to hundreds and hundreds of 
 thousands. It is often also a problem of the greatest diffi¬ 
 culty. Experience has demonstrated that the streets cannot 
 even be kept clean without the aid of the merit principle. 
 
 The isolated house on the prairie or the hill-side is kept 
 healthy by the simplest sanitary measures and its location may 
 
i7 
 
 be such that it remains healthy in spite of a reckless disregard 
 of even ordinary sanitary precautions. The building in the 
 congested tenement region of a crowded city not only breeds 
 enfeebled vitality and too often death among its own occupants 
 unless extraordinary sanitary precautions are enforced, but be¬ 
 comes a radiating centre of disease. The enforcement of 
 these precautions is a matter of administration; and the lower 
 the death rate of a city the higher the appreciation and the 
 more rigid the enforcement of the merit principle in the ad¬ 
 ministration of the city’s health ordinances. 
 
 A sparse population may be sufficiently served by a single 
 teacher in a one roomed school house and the teacher may 
 build the fire, sweep the school room and teach his score or 
 two of scholars. When each school house must accommodate 
 a thousand pupils and there must be hundreds of such school 
 houses, the administrative problem becomes one of the first 
 magnitude. Without the merit system the problem is insol¬ 
 uble. Go to any city in the land; if its public school system 
 is successful, you will find the merit principle actively enforced 
 by the department of education; if its public school system 
 is a failure the merit principle is absent or but lamely recog¬ 
 nized. 
 
 Wherever there is a multitude in a limited area good order 
 must be enforced, laws in the interest of public morals must 
 be observed, peace must be preserved and a special group ot 
 the citizens must be set apart from the rest and charged with 
 the duty and the responsibility of enforcing the laws and pre¬ 
 serving order and peace. Is this class corrupt ? Does it sell 
 protection to vice and overlook violations of law for its own 
 private gain then there is no merit principle in the police ad¬ 
 ministration. When you find the wives of police captains 
 large landlords and the brothers or cousins of chiefs of police 
 yacht owners, the “ starch ” has been taken out of police civil 
 service. 
 
 What we have said of streets, of the public health, of edu¬ 
 cation and of the police is equally applicable to each of the 
 departments of municipal public service. Each is largely, if 
 not chiefly an administrative problem, and good administra¬ 
 tion whether of private or public business depends in its last 
 analysis upon the selection of its agents solely with reference 
 to their personal merit and fitness. In the public service the 
 
i8 
 
 recognition and enforcement of this truth are incomparably 
 more important and its disregard more far reaching in evil re¬ 
 sults than in private business. 
 
 It is not alone that the private employer must pay in his 
 own person and out of his own pocket the loss occasioned by 
 his unwise selection of employees, while in the public service 
 the public treasury pays the bill and the official superior may 
 even profit pecuniarily and politically by the incompetence or 
 dishonesty of his subordinates, but the public administrative 
 service is subjected to a new master as each change of politi¬ 
 cal policy brings a new party into power. If now the person¬ 
 nel of the purely administrative service is to shift with each 
 change of political policy efficient administration is impossible 
 no matter how lavishly the public funds may be spent to secure 
 it. It is as if the Pennsylvania Railroad Company should 
 change its directors every two or three years on questions of 
 policy such as extending its lines by lease or purchase, con¬ 
 structing new lines, acquiring additional terminals or coal 
 fields, furnishing through transportation, and the like, and with 
 each change of directors should call into its service an entirely 
 new set of station agents, trainmen, superintendents, machin¬ 
 ists and civil engineers. The directors’ policy might be never 
 so good, the administration would be unspeakably bad. No 
 one doubts or denies these obvious truths as applied to ordin¬ 
 ary business affairs, why should there be any doubt of their 
 being equally truths and equally obvious in the case of muni¬ 
 cipal government. 
 
 It is not surprising therefore that there is not a well gov¬ 
 erned city anywhere whose civil service is not based upon the 
 merit principle and not an ill governed city in whose civil ser¬ 
 vice the evil effect of neglect or positive disregard of this prin¬ 
 ciple do not serve as an example and a warning. These pro¬ 
 positions are true of the cities of France and Spain of Ger¬ 
 many and England under their widely varying forms of gov¬ 
 ernment as well as of the cities in our democratic republic. 
 Municipal government whatever its form and in whatever 
 country is an attempt to meet the common needs of a consid¬ 
 erable population concentrated within a limited area. What 
 factor is or can be so important in the solution of this problem 
 as administrative skill and honesty ? And the more populous 
 the city the more imperative the demand for honesty and skill 
 
*9 
 
 in administration. Whatever the plan of municipal govern¬ 
 ment, however carefully devised, and by whomsoever attemp¬ 
 ted to be carried out, it is always and everywhere a failure 
 unless the merit principle obtains in the municipal public ser¬ 
 vice and the measure of the failure is the extent of the viola¬ 
 tion of this principle. 
 
 But while it is true that civil service reform is an adminis¬ 
 trative reform, the existence or absence of the merit principle 
 in the public service is also a decisive factor indetermining 
 important questions of purely municipal policy. Shall the city 
 own or operate its system of intra mural transit ? Shall it pro¬ 
 vide its own system of lighting ? Shall it undertake on an 
 adequate scale the economical and sanitary disposition of the 
 city’s waste ? Shall it establish museums and libraries ? Shall 
 it have an intelligent system of large and small parks ? Shall 
 the management and improvement of its water front be a mat¬ 
 ter of public or private enterprise ? The mere aggregation of 
 population within a small area creates innumerable sources of 
 revenue; shall these be utilized for the profit of the public 
 treasury ? Shall the city go on indefinitely giving away to 
 private individuals the income its own existence creates and 
 which its own needs require ? Must the tax rate go ever 
 higher while the almost exhaustless streams of the city’s wealth 
 forever flow into private coffers ? These are some of the ques¬ 
 tions confronting the policy determining authority of every con¬ 
 siderable city in this and other countries. Where the merit prin¬ 
 ciple prevails we know what are the answers to these questions. 
 Where the merit principle is absent or is but lamely applied 
 we also know the answers. And in a democratic country 
 these answers are breeding a popular unrest and a political 
 discontent that may well make thoughtful men. pause. The 
 baleful compact between the political “ boss ” and the cor¬ 
 poration which exists by public favor and lives by or on the 
 public revenue, if it continues, means the sure destruction of 
 our present form of government, and what may then take 
 its place let wiser men than I foretell. 
 
 The powerful forces underlying modern industrial civiliza¬ 
 tion are driving a larger and larger proportion of the popula¬ 
 tion into the cities. In our older States the city dweller 
 already constitutes the majority in the electorate. The City 
 vote chooses the majority of the State legislature. The boss 
 
20 
 
 of the most populous city in the State aspires to be and often 
 is the boss of the State. What makes this possible ? Is there 
 any doubt that not the least important reason is the fact that 
 the merit principle is not rigidly enforced in the municipal 
 civil service ? Imagine, if you can, a city boss without patron¬ 
 age or hope of any, with nothing to give and nothing to prom¬ 
 ise save at his own personal expense. Is it not true that so 
 long as, the merit principle is absent in municipal administra¬ 
 tion a corrupting political force is steadily at work producing 
 the political boss and that not only successful municipal gov¬ 
 ernment is impossible but the unclean municipal politics begets 
 unclean state politics and steadily tends to create a national 
 government after its own kind? On the other hand, imagine 
 New York City, Buffalo, Troy, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester 
 and the lesser cities of New York State each a city without 
 political patronage within its limits, each a city in whose public 
 service the merit principle wholly prevailed. Municipal gov¬ 
 ernment in the State of New York would no longer be a 
 problem. 
 
 Civil Service Reform is not by any means the only reform 
 needed, nor will good government be accomplished without 
 the aid of other vital reforms; but every stride forward in 
 Civil Service Reform brings their accomplishment nearer, 
 makes their success more sure; and it is certain that a suc¬ 
 cessful municipal government without the observance of the 
 merit principle in its civil service is unthinkable. 
 
Publications of the New York Civil-Service Reform Ass'n 
 
 The Beginning of the Spoils System in the National Govern¬ 
 ment, 1829 - 30 . (Reprinted, by permission, from Parton’s “Life 
 of Andrew Jackson.”) Per copy, 5 cts. 
 
 Term and Tenure of Office. By Dorman B. Eaton. Second edition* 
 
 abridged. Per copy, 15 cts. 
 
 Daniel Webster and the Spoils System. An extract from Senator 
 Bayard’s oration at Dartmouth College, June, 1882. 
 
 A Primer of Civil-Service Reform, prepared by George William 
 Curtis. (English and German Editions.) 
 
 Address of Hon, Carl Schurz in opposition to the bill to amend the New 
 York Civil Service laws, commonly known as the “Black Act.” 
 May 6, 1897. 
 
 Report on the Operation of the “ Black Act.” March 21 , 1898. 
 Annual Reports of the Civil Service Reform Association of New 
 York for the years 1883-1898 inclusive. Per copy, 8 cts. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 United States Civil-Service Statutes and Revised Rules of May 
 
 6, 1896 . 
 
 State Civil-Service Reform Acts of New York and Massachu¬ 
 setts. 
 
 Decisions and Opinions in Construction of the Civil-Service Daws. 
 
 (1890) Per copy, 15 cts. 
 
 The Meaning of Civil-Service Reform. By E, O. Graves. 
 
 The Selection of Laborers. (In English and German Editions). By 
 James M. Bugbee late of the Massachusetts Civil-Service Commission. 
 Report of Select Committee on Reform in the Civil Service 
 (H. R.), regarding the registration of laborers in the United States 
 Service. 
 
 Report of same Committee regarding selection of Fourth-Class 
 Postmasters. 
 
 The Need of a Classified and Non-Partisan Census Bureau- 
 
 Report of a Special Committee of the National League. (1898) 
 George William Curtis. A commemorative address by Parke Godwin. 
 (Published by the Century Association). 10 cents per copy. 
 
 (a charge is made only where the price is givrn.) 
 
 Orders for the publications will be filled by George McAneny, Secre¬ 
 tary, 54 William St, New York, or by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 27 and 29 West 
 23d St., New York 
 
PRESIDENT: 
 
 CARL 
 
 SCHURZ. 
 
 SECRETARY: 
 
 TREASURER: 
 
 GEORGE McANENY. 
 
 A, S. FRISSELL. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 
 
 HENRY HITCHCOCK, 
 
 AUGUSTUS R. MACDONOUGH, 
 
 HENRY C. LEA, 
 
 RT. REV. HENRY C. FOTTER, 
 
 FRANKLIN MACVEAGH, 
 
 J. HALL PLEASANTS. 
 
 RT. REV* P. J. RYAN, 
 
 WILLIAM POTTS. 
 
 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 
 
 WILLIAM A. AIKEN, 
 
 HERBERT WELSH, 
 
 CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, 
 
 WILLIAM G. LOW, 
 
 SILAS W. BURT, 
 
 DORMAN B. EATON, 
 
 EDWARD CARY, 
 
 WILLIAM POTTS, 
 
 CHARLES COLLINS, 
 
 CHARLES RICHARDSON, 
 
 LUCIUS B. SWIFT, 
 
 SHERMAN S. ROGERS, 
 
 RICHARD H. DANA, 
 
 CARL SCHURZ, 
 
 JOHN W. ELA, 
 
 EDWARD M. SHEPARD, 
 
 WILLIAM 41 DUDLEY FOULKE, 
 
 MOORFIEL.D STOREY, 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 
 
 EVERETT P. WHEELER, i 
 
 MORRILL 
 
 WYMAN, JR. 
 
 Office of the League, 
 
 No. 54 William St., New Y,