20
their efforts to circumvent the civil service rules, in “getting the men they wanted.” They forthwith engineered through the Legislature a bill turning over the management of the civil service examinations for the Fire Department to the Fire Commission itself. What they aimed at was no secret. The bill failed to become law in consequence of some peculiar provisions of the State Constitution concerning bills relating to cities. Meanwhile, the majority of the Fire Commission has fallen into the hands of men who are not given to spoils politics, but are true to the public interest. These men are perfectly satisfied with the control of the examinations by the City Civil Service Board, and protest emphatically against the transfer of that control to the department on the very ground, that, in the long run, it would mean a return to the spoils system. The same opinion is expressed by other heads of departments for the same reason. Here is the object lesson.
Will it be said that men may be put at the head of the departments who will be as conscientious in the management of the examinations as the independent Civil Service Boards? The answer is that if the examinations are put under the control of the departments the chances for spoil are increased and the spoils politicians will make redoubled efforts to secure the chief places for men who will do their bidding. On the other hand, the more the departments are stripped of the chance for spoils the more they will lose in interest to the spoils politicians, and the easier will it be to put them under the control of men who look only to the public interest.
I am, therefore, not going too far when I say that this scheme of transferring, in whole or in part, the management of the examinations from the independent Civil Service Boards to the departments means a deliberate attempt to destroy the substance of the merit system while preserving some of its forms, and that it has no other purpose than to return to the old spoils practices. No Legislature can pass a bill embodying such a scheme or anything akin to it, and no Governor can sign such a bill, without becoming responsible parties to this plot. I call upon all friends of good government in the country to watch with keen attention the developments which are likely to take place this winter in the State of New York. If they hear of the introduction in the Legislature of such a bill as I have described they will understand what it means.
