Page:Schurz Birthday 15.JPG

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arrested, and the foundation laid for a system of scientific control that is now being successfully worked out. The details of Mr. Schurz's work in the Cabinet for Civil Service Reform, the speaker left for his successor on the programme. He concluded with a reference to those high standards of public virtue that Mr. Schurz had maintained consistently throughout his career, and the observance of which had carried him to the highest position under the Government of the United States that it is possible for a citizen of foreign birth to hold.

Mr. Shepard's address dealt with the work that Mr. Schurz has carried on, both officially, at Washington, and in his place as private citizen, for the reform of the civil service. In the Senate, in 1871, he had introduced a general bill to regulate and improve the Federal administrative service, and made the first great speech on behalf of the reform heard within that Chamber. As Secretary of the Interior, he had established a complete system for the selection of subordinates of every class on the basis of special fitness, and in every appointment or removal that he made, he had considered the personal merit or deserts of the officer or employee, and nothing more. In the summer of 1881 he became an active member of the Governing Committee of the National Civil Service Reform League, then organized, and in 1892 succeeded the lamented George William Curtis as its President. The progress that this great