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mandate, that public employees appointed in contravention of that mandate are deprived of what their hearts most yearn for, their pay, and that therefore the soul of the spoils politician is seriously disturbed. He has to deal with the fact that the competitive examination cannot be gotten out of the way. But he does not despair. His inventive genius is equal to the emergency. To him the problem is simple. What does the spoils politician care whether the competitive system controls the appointments if he can get control of the competitive examinations? The party machine hopes to coerce Governors and Mayors into putting machine men at the head of the different departments of the service—places not subject to competitive examination. It has succeeded with this coercion so often that it may hope to succeed again. Why not, then, transfer the conduct of the competitive examinations from the general State Commission appointed by the Governor, and from the city commissions appointed by the Mayors, who took the competitive business more or less seriously, to the different departments of the service, at the head of many of which the party machine hopes to have its tools? The constitutional mandate will then, in point of form at least, be complied with. There will be competitive examinations. The courts will have nothing more to say. But what a roaring farce these competitive examinations would become under the control of examiners chosen, for instance, by the present State Superintendent of Public Works in New York, who has made it one of his favorite studies, how to “beat” the civil service law, or by that member of the Charities Board in New York City, who loudly advocates the transfer of the examinations because under the present system he “cannot get the men we want!”
The ostensible reason for such a transfer will undoubtedly be that the heads of departments know best what qualifications are required for the positions under them, and that they are therefore best fitted to adapt the examinations to those requirements. This is plausible but futile under our circumstances. It is a matter of universal experience that the heads of departments are most severely subjected to pressure for changes in their force immediately after their accession to office, that is to say, when in an overwhelming majority of cases they are least acquainted with their own duties and
