210 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
removed from the test of competitive examination, for the appointing power can choose, and is intended by the law to choose, any person who has been able to get upon an eligible list, even at the very bottom. In a report of the Civil-Service Reform Association, published March 21, it is shown that, in one case at least, a man standing 200th on the merit eligible list of the State Civil-Service Board was appointed to an office. The governor of New York, in preparing the law which bears his name, intended to give to the appointing power liberty of selection, and he has accomplished his purpose.
2. That the stewards of the state hospitals, asylums, and houses of refuge were in 1897 removed by the State Civil Service Board, neces- sarily with the governor's approval, from Class II, in which competitive examinations are required, to Class I, in which no examinations are required. As the stewards of the state institutions are the persons who have the control of the purchase of supplies and who, therefore, are the most liable to be assailed by improper local influences, placing this office entirely at the mercy of personal and political pressure is an ominous step, and one which bodes ill for the comfort of the inmates of state institutions and for the economy of state funds.
In this connection the following extract from the letter of a dis- interested citizen in regard to one important state institution probably points to a greater evil than is suggested even, for if one institution is so threatened, it is probable that all are alike exposed to it :
The largest charitable institution in our neighborhood, the asylum for the insane, has never been run on the spoils system, and has always been suc- cessfully managed. Now, however, an attempt is being made to turn the asylum into a political machine, and the friends of the institution view the threatened change with alarm.
The following extract from the letter of a state commissioner is disheartening, for it is undoubtedly true :
It is my experience that well-meaning men, who are in favor of the merit system in the abstract, are perverted when they become public officials, and are easily persuaded in their own minds that they know personally someone who could better fill any position under them than anyone else in the state.
City and county institutions. — In respect to local institutions Mrs. Lowell writes :
The replies in regard to city and county institutions have been extremely meager. The nine replies received from superintendents of the poor contain but little that bears upon the subject of the inquiry, and although a special inquiry as to poorhouses, jails, and penitentiaries was addressed to the secre-
