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against civil service reform has in a great measure ceased to be resorted to. The merit system has so conspicuously commended itself by its practical results to the enlightened opinion of the country, as to make the old objections to it appear simply foolish or spiteful. When we are now told that our competitive examinations may indeed exhibit the scholastic acquirements of a candidate for place, but not his practical business capacity, his industry, or his aptitude as a worker, the overwhelming answer is found in the established fact, that wherever the competitive system has been properly carried out, it has immeasurably improved the service in its practical efficiency. When we are told that our competitive examinations can, in any event, not prove the moral qualifications of the candidate, his truthfulness, his honesty, we can point to the unquestionable fact, that many thousands of places have for many years been filled under the merit system, and that in the places so filled the number of cases of dishonest conduct has been infinitesimally small. When the threadbare objection is repeated that our competitive examinations will give an undue advantage to college-bred men and exclude the humbler classes of the people, the statistical showing presents itself that since the competitive system was introduced in the national service, only a little more than twelve per cent. of the men appointed under it were college-bred men, and outside of the places demanding scientific acquirements hardly more than six per cent.—that in fact the service is more open than ever to persons of the so-called humbler classes. And so we might go through the whole list of the hackneyed criticism, and at every step the theoretical objector would find himself utterly discomfitted by the evidence of practical experience.
The argumentative fight against civil service reform has, therefore, very largely ceased. It is true that this year for the first time since the enactment of the national civil service law, a national convention of one of the great political parties, that held at Chicago, made in its platform an attack upon the merit system. But nobody will maintain that this attack bore any vestige of a reasoned motive. The pretence of that platform, and of Mr. Bryan as its expounder, that there is “a life tenure being built up at Washington which excludes from participation in the benefits the humbler members of society,” simply flies in the face of well-known fact. And the demand
