ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE.

DECEMBER 12 AND 13, 1894.

Pursuant to call duly issued, the fourteenth Annual Meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League was held in Chicago, Ill., on the 12th and 13th of December, 1894. Among the delegates who were in more or less regular attendance during the several sessions were the following:

Richard Henry Dana.

Dana Estes.

BOSTON, MASS.:

BROOKLINE, MASS.:

BROOKLYN, N. Y.:

William G. Low.

BUFFALO, N. Y.:

Hon. Henry A. Richmond, John B. Olmsted, Frederic Almy, Hon. Charles B. Wheeler, Thomas Cary and Henry J. Wilkes.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: Philip S. Abbot.

CONNECTICUT: Gen. William A. Aiken and William

Potts.

CHICAGO, ILL.: John W. Ela, Franklin MacVeagh, Adlai T. Ewing, Hon. Leroy B. Thoman, Hon. George E. Adams, Hon. Murray F. Tuley, William Kent, Harlan W. Cooley, Charles Deering, W. K. Ackerman, J. W. Brooks, Russell H. Curtis, Edward J. Phelps, Charles L. Hutchinson, George L. Paddock, proxy for Hon. Everett P. Wheeler, of New York; James S. Norton, Edwin Burritt Smith, John H. Hamline, Oliver T. Morton, Frank H. Scott, Bryan Lathrop, E. O. Brown, C. R. Crane, E. A Bancroft, J. J. Glessner, Murray Nelson and Cyrus H. Adams.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: F. L. Siddons.

INDIANA: Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Lucius B. Swift, Prof. Demarchus C. Brown and Evans Woollen. CORNELL UNIVERSITY: Prof. J. W. Jenks.

MADISON, WIS.:

Noble Gregory.

MARYLAND:

MILWAUKEE

Charles Kendall Adams and Charles

Charles J. Bonaparte.

J. R. Brigham, Gen. F. C. Winkler, Ber

nard Goldsmith and Prof. J. J. Mapel.

MISSOURI: Henry Hitchcock, Hon. C. P. Walbridge, J. C. Cabanne and Albert Blair.

NASHVILLE, TENN.: Herman Justi.

NEW YORK CITY: Hon. Carl Schurz, Col. Silas W. Burt, Frederick W. Holls and George McAneny.

PHILADELPHIA, PENN.: Herbert Welsh, R. Francis Wood, Charles Richardson, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, and Prof. E. J. James

In response to invitations extended by the League to affiliated bodies, delegates were also present from a number of such organizations, as follows:

NATIONAL BOARD OF TRADE: John A. Gano of Cincinnati, A. C. Raymond of Detroit, and Henry A. Richmond of Buffalo.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LETTER-CARRIERS: J. C. Alton of Jamestown, N. Y., C. M. O'Brien of Cleveland, and John E. Hammond of Chicago.

MUNICIPAL LEAGUE OF MILWAUKEE: John A. Butler, J. E. Friend, J. R. Brigham and W. F. Nowell.

MASSACHUSETTS REFORM CLUB: Richard Henry Dana. REFORM CLUB, New York: Charles Deering.

MUNICIPAL ORDER LEAGUE, Chicago: Mrs. I. M. Horn

sey.

PHILADELPHIA MUNICIPAL LEAGUE: Herbert Welsh, R. Francis Wood, Charles Richardson and C. R. Woodruff.

Many of the delegates present from the Civil Service Reform Associations represented also the Anti-Spoils League.

The morning session of the 12th, commencing at 10.30 o'clock, was occupied by a joint meeting of the General and Executive Committees, held at the rooms of the Commerce Club in the Auditorium Building.

At 2.30 in the afternoon, an open meeting of the League was held at the Commerce Club, at which an address of welcome was delivered by the president of the Chicago Civil Service Reform League, Mr. John W. Ela, and the following papers were read :

"The Influence of the Spoils Idea upon the Government of American Cities." Herbert Welsh.*

"Citizenship and the Civil Service." Hon. C. P. Walbridge, Mayor of St. Louis.†

"Municipal Reform Impossible under the Spoils System." Chas. B. Wilby.

The annual address of the President, on "The Necessity and Progress of Civil Service Reform," was delivered at Central Music Hall at 8 o'clock in the evening of the 12th, before a large audience. It is as follows:

*Page 57.

+ Page 68.

*Page 79.

THE NECESSITY AND PROGRESS OF CIVIL

SERVICE REFORM.

An Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League at Chicago, Ill., December 12, 1894.

BY HON. CARL SCHURZ.

This is the first time that the National Civil Service Reform League holds its annual meeting near the great Mississippi Valley; but we know that its cause is no stranger here. Not only has it in this region some of its most faithful advocates, but the practical sense and the public spirit which have wrought here such wonders, seem to produce the very atmosphere in which this cause should prosper; for Civil Service Reform is, in the sense of an enlightened, large and patriotic public spirit, a preeminently practical conception-practical in its principles, practical in its aims, and practical in its methods.

What Civil Service Reform demands, is simply that the business part of the Government shall be carried on in a sound, businesslike manner. This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common sense there should be no two opinions about it. And the condition of things to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves. In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that viciousness and absurdity