the provisions of the city charter prescribing the introduction of the merit system in the municipal service. Such things admonish us that militant watchfulness must still be the order of the day in the Reform camp. I am glad to say that in Massachusetts the constitutionality of the obnoxious law is ably contested in the courts; and we all know that the champions of Civil Service Reform in Indiana are of too belligerent a spirit to let the refractory Mayor sleep on his spoils laurels in comfort.
On the other hand, in the State of New York and in its great cities the Reform system has made most cheering progress. The embodiment in the State Constitution of the Civil Service Reform clause, and its faithful observance by the Governor, the Mayors of the great municipalities and the respective Civil Service boards, have caused a very large extension of Civil Service Rules and a vigorous enforcement of them. One of the most important features of that progress consists in the adoption and the successful operation in the large cities of the labor-registration system, which rescues the laboring men doing public work from the tyrannical control and the rapacity of political bosses and machines. And now in Maryland, too, the day of Reform has dawned with unexpected brilliancy, and I trust that old State will step into the front rank of its champions. There are several others that promise to follow her.
Nothing could be more encouraging than this steady growth of the Civil Service Reform movement in popular favor. Most of its former opponents
