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tive tests to which every qualified person has free access, and which secure to the best merit properly demonstrated the best title to appointment.
The competitive principle, I repeat, is the very soul of civil service reform. Without it there can be no true merit system on a large scale. Without it every reformatory attempt of a general nature will eventually become a sham and result in failure. I am sure I am not going too far in saying that whenever you find a man who presents himself as a friend of civil service reform, but who stops short of the competitive principle as a general rule admitting but few exceptions, you have before you one who is either ignorant of the fundamental principle, or a pretender with evil designs. And whenever political parties or politicians speak of reforming the civil service and offer to that end a general measure of legislation not containing the competitive rule, you may set them down as either deceiving themselves or as seeking to deceive the people.
There is another essential point which must never be lost sight of. The conduct of the competitive examinations should present every possible guarantee of impartiality and should therefore be independent of the appointing officers, that is to say, out of the reach of the pressure of political influence to which the appointing officers are exposed. In other words, while the President of the United States, or the Governor of a State, or the Mayor of a city may exercise the power of determining the rules under which the competitive examinations are to be conducted, and of appointing the persons who are to conduct them, those persons, when so appointed, should, in conducting, those examinations, not be subject to be directed or influenced by the officers by whom, or for whose departments of the service, the appointments are to be made. For, if they were, the impartiality of their action would in many cases be gravely endangered; and in many more cases be generally suspected.
To illustrate this point you will pardon me for relating what is at present said to be going on in New York. I have mentioned the fact that the Constitution of that State makes the introduction of the competitive merit system in all branches of the service obligatory; that the Court of Appeals has given the broadest construction to that constitutional
