The decrease in the proportion of employees appointed after competitive examination, and rejected during the probationary period, is very significant. In the Railway Mail Service in 1890 there were 150 such rejections; in 1892, 70; in 1894, 18, and in 1896 only 5.

The results of the work of the Commission during the last thirteen years ought, in fact, to be more than gratifying to the advocates of civil service reform. Their claims for the merit system have been fully realized. Wherever the civil service rules have been applied the service has been improved, extravagance has been checked, and the chances of corruption in office by the sale of positions, or by their disposal for considerations other than those of merit and fitness, have been removed. With the extension of the classified service to cover practically all positions in the Executive service which under the existing statute can be included, efficiency and economy should, and doubtless will, become the underlying principles in the administration of the Government.

Results of Reform in the Department of

Agriculture.

ADDRESS OF HON. J. STERLING MORTON.

It is related of a certain American citizen that he arrived at the age of fifty years without having indulged in any marked peculiarities or frivolities, except a too constant attendance upon the theatre. He was always foremost among "firstnighters," and loudly laughed or silently wept as the play went. Each succeeding drama, tragedy or comedy, was to him more realistic than its predecessor. His satisfactions and enjoyments were consummate and intense. But at last an unwise friend induced him to attend a "rehearsal" and there he saw all the mechanism of the stage and listened to the uninteresting recital of the parts. His illusions were dispelled. He never again enjoyed a play or an opera.

And now, in the presence of the members of the Civil Service Reform League of the United States, the foregoing comes to my mind, because it somewhat illustrates my past and my present position relative to the public service. Arriving in Washington early in March, 1893, with a very indefinite knowledge of the Departmental positions and the services which they require, I was inducted to office entertaining the idea that the old system of appointments was probably well enough and good enough for practical as well as political purposes. Those views were the result, no doubt, of the patriotic esteem in which Senators and Representatives in Congress had been held by me and those with whom I came in daily contact. It never then occurred to me that any American citizen was in public life purely for personal ends or personal gains. It had never dawned upon my mind that the patriotism exhibited upon the stump was stage, and not real love of country. No

suspicion had permanently lodged in my mind that statesmen ever sought offices for their relatives and friends and billeted them upon Departments for the mere sake of relieving themselves of the duties of kinship and friendship.

But my illusions and delusions were suddenly dispelled by the innumerable collusions which I detected between statesmen and those relatives and retainers whom they sought to impose upon the public service without considering their efficiency, fitness or adaption for that service.

My primary experience was in regard to the position of Appointment Clerk in the Department of Agriculture. The incumbent of that office had been appointed by my predecessor, Secretary Rusk, and had held the place about two years. He was a man more than fifty years of age, thoroughly qualified, punctiliously exact and conscientious in the performance of all his duties. He had faithfully kept the records, as far as they could have been made up under the patronage or political system, of the merits of each employee. He knew the day and hour when each came into the service, when each had been promoted or demoted, and the salary of each. He knew how many days of sick-leave and how many days of vacation had been given to each every year. The archives of the office of the Appointment Clerk were as complete and perfect as they could have been made under the then existing spoils system of appointments. But immediately upon induction to office I was assailed with the importunities of Representatives in Congress from the State whence came this Appointment Clerk, to displace him, because he was a Republican, and to put a gentleman whom they named into the position, because he was a Democrat. No Congressman or Senator suggested educational qualifications or peculiar personal merits as factors in the case. Then I began to see the importance of a Classified Service.

In the very beginning of my duties as Secretary of Agriculture I had been solicited, importuned, imperatively ordered, in short, to deprive myself and the Department of a faithful, honest and efficient officer, and thus to cripple my capabilities for intelligently managing the Department, and to minimize the value of its public service, by accepting for that clerkship a person utterly ignorant of the details of its duties.

The importunities continued; the importunists were put

off from day to day, until my official life became burdensome to such an extent, that I could see only one way of extricating myself from the torments which the spoils system provides for those who may have Departmental places at their disposal. And that way led up to and through the Classified Service. Therefore, I asked the President to place the position of Appointment Clerk, by special order, within that service. This was readily accomplished, because, as you know, there is no more genuine or courageous advocate of the reform of the Civil Service than President Cleveland.

Soon after the classification, the statesmen from the West who were so anxious to provide me with a raw recruit, by displacing a skilled veteran, called again. They were informed politely that, while I could remove the incumbent, they could not name his successor, nor could I name his successor, because the position had been placed in the Classified Service. They were amazed; they were indignant. And when informed that the Secretary of Agriculture had secured the classification of this position, their indignation was such that it found vent only through the door and out of the Department.

But, as the Executive branches of the federal Government have no right to demand appointments from the Legislative branch, it is difficult to determine upon what law or alleged right, Representatives and Senators may claim to place their favorites in departmental service and then hold the heads of Departments responsible for results.

Permit me, briefly, to give you an epitome of the relation of the United States Department of Agriculture during the last twelve years to the classified service. The Department was first placed under the operation of the civil service law on December 12, 1884, by the inclusion of 118 persons and the positions they occupied, in the classified service. That was by order of President Arthur. On June 30, 1888, the service was extended by order of President Cleveland, and 116 more positions were included. On January 5, 1893, President Harrison ordered observers and local forecast officials employed outside the District of Columbia in the Department of Agriculture, numbering 314, into the classified service.

On March 20, 1894, the position of Appointment Clerk of the Department was added to the list of classified places.

July 1, 1894, the classified service in the Department was

extended so as to include all inspectors and assistant inspectors in the Bureau of Animal Industry, numbering at that time 67 men. The duty of these inspectors is to examine and pass on the sanitary condition of live animals, first, and afterwards to examine all carcasses of slaughtered animals which are intended for interstate or foreign trade. They either accept or reject, after determining sanitary conditions by ante-mortem and postmortem investigations. It occurred to me that this inspection, carried on by laymen who were entirely unversed in veterinary science, was a waste of money and a farce. Inspection should inspect. Only those learned in the pathology of domestic animals and skilled in veterinary science, could render service in this line worth paying for or commensurate with the requirements of the public health and the good name of American meats, intended, either at home or abroad, for human consumption. Therefore, at my suggestion, this classification was made, and as a condition precedent to securing an examination for an inspectorship or assistant inspectorship before the United States Civil Service Commission, all applicants must exhibit diplomas from reputable veterinary colleges. Thus began the building up of an inspection system which has been of inestimable advantage to American meats in the home market and also in foreign markets. The certification of the healthfulness and wholesomeness of edible meats by inspectors of the United States Department of Agriculture has credit in all markets, co-equal with that certification of a United States mint which assures the fineness and weight of a gold or silver coin.

On June 6, 1894, the professors of meteorology in the Weather Bureau were brought into the classified service.

It will be seen that up to this time, after my conviction of the error which I had entertained as to the possibilities of carrying on departmental work honestly, and efficiently under the old spoils system, my conversion had steadily evolved until now I began to feel the value and necessity of the saving grace of a classified service in every division and bureau of the Department. Consequently, on July 12, 1894, the chiefs and assistant chiefs of Entomology, and of Ornithology and Mammalogy, were included in the classified service, and on November 6, 1894, the chief and assistant chief of Pomology were likewise included.