This is not surprising, for, as everybody acquainted with placeholders knows, the member of the classified service feels himself no longer secure in his tenure if he merely does his duty faithfully and efficiently, but he is troubled again by a sense of danger unless he win the favor of the party potentates by rendering such political service as may be exacted of him. That this danger really exists I will not assert. But the feeling of apprehension, created by the things I have been describing, very extensively does exist, and it cannot fail to produce demoralizing effects most hurtful to the service.

An effort is being made to bring to justice those who have violated the law by the levying of assessments in the case mentioned as well as in another case, on the ground of an opinion recently rendered by ex-Senator Edmunds, who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate which reported the statute in question; and it is hoped that a salutary example will be made of the guilty persons. This, if successfully carried through, would indeed serve to prevent the repetition of such glaring excesses in the same line. But much more drastic measures on the part of the Administration, to demonstrate its earnestness as to the maintenance of the merit system, will be required to cure that deterioration of the atmosphere in the public service which has been brought about by the multiplication of places filled by political influence as well as by the impunity with which in so many conspicuous cases the rules have been circumvented and the spirit of the law has been openly defied—an impunity which but too easily is taken for approval.

In this respect, I must confess, the paragraphs in the President's message referring to the civil service, fail to afford much comfort, for they may be summed up in the one sentence that everything is now in satisfactory

condition. We can only hope that the cheerful optimism betrayed by this utterance will not prevent the President from considering worthy of notice the investigations made by this League and the resulting reports upon the happenings in various branches of the service. Those reports, containing not mere theories or inferences, but facts, may serve to open his eyes to many things of which, it must be assumed, he was not aware, or which, at least, he may not have seen in their true character when he wrote his message, but a thorough appreciation of which may induce him to apply the appropriate remedies and to retrieve the grievous missteps we have now to deplore.

The picture of the retrograde tendencies in the Federal service which my duty to tell the plain truth has compelled me to draw, is relieved by some facts of a more encouraging nature. In the State of New York a distinct advance as to the maintenance as well as the further extension of the merit system has been achieved by the enactment of a new civil service law. That law not only sweeps away the contrivances by which the late State Administration sought to "take the starch out of civil service," but it places the merit system throughout on the firm basis of well-ordered regulations, securing to it a practical machinery, and provides for the extension of its operation over the counties, in which it had formerly not been in force. Even in the City of New York, where the sinister genius of Tammany Hall devotes itself with the accustomed zest and skill to the task of circumventing the civil service law, and where the local Civil Service Reform Association coöperating with the State authorities has to fight over every foot of ground, many valuable successes have been scored-at least in crossing iniquitous schemes and in making the ways of the transgressor duly hard. Also on the other side of the

continent, in San Francisco, distinct progress has been recorded by the adoption of a city charter providing for the introduction of the merit system in the municipal service.

But the fact in which the friend of civil service reform may find the most cheering assurance of the triumph of his cause in the future, consists in the striking evidences of the growth of that cause in the favor of public opinion. The time is not far behind us when civil service reform was superciliously sniffed at as a whimsical notion of some dreamy theorists not to be taken seriously. Even when after the first attempt at the practical introduction of the merit system in the Federal service President Grant dropped it again in consequence of the refusal of Congress to make any appropriation for its support, the people generally accepted the event with cool indifference. There were indeed expressions of regret, but they came only from a comparatively small number of citizens who had become especially interested in the subject. But when, six months ago, President McKinley's order curtailing the area of the merit system appeared, the manifestations of popular disapproval were far more general and earnest than the originators of the measure had expected and than the friends of the merit system had dared to hope. Not even party spirit, usually so potent in such cases, was proof against the popular feeling of disappointment, not a few journals otherwise staunch partisans of the Administrations, giving voice to that feeling with remarkable emphasis.

The reason is simple. In President Grant's time civil service reform still appeared in this country as a new and strange scheme, running in the teeth of the political notions and habits of half a century, and clouded over by the uncertainties of a doubtful experiment. Now it is a stranger no longer. The people have made its acquain

tance by actual observation. They know that it is not an idle fancy, but an eminently sober and practical conception; that its aim is to remedy real evils and to produce a real good, by delivering our political life of fatally demoralizing influences, and by giving the Republic efficient, economical and honest service. They know that it pursues this aim by methods which every intelligent business man standing at the head of a large establishment and exposed to constant and promiscuous pressure for employment would adopt for himself as eminently businesslike. In one word, they know that civil service reform as embodied in the merit system is simply the application to the public service of the plainest principles of common-sense and common honesty. Even its enemies are at heart recognizing its virtues.

This has become so widely understood by people of all classes in all parts of the country, that the propagation of correct knowledge of the objects and the means of civil service reform is becoming from day to day an easier task to the advocates of the merit system. Their foremost duty is now to baffle the efforts of the opposing forces, which, seeing the futility of attacking civil service reform on its general merits, strive to cripple or pervert it in the detail of its operation. Those forces consist of the small politicians who covet the offices for their personal advantage, the political leaders who seek to control the offices as party spoil in order to hold together and increase their following, and the unsteady statesmen in power who, while professing, often not without sincerity, to be "also" in favor of civil service reform, have indeed courage enough to assert their professed principles against their party enemies, but not firmness enough to maintain them against their party friends. The combination of these forces is an old one. It is expert in its business, and it will never do to underestimate its strength.

How formidable it may become, we have in these days again had occasion for observing.

But however powerful, it is far from being invincible. We cannot forget that against the same old combination the civil service reform movement has won all its successes, one after another, during periods of time when it was far less intelligently and vigorously supported by the public opinion of the country than it is to-day. While its friends have recently suffered a grievous disappointment, they have no reason for being discouraged. To retrieve the lost ground and to advance their cause further toward the final consummation, they have only to follow their old course with militant courage and constancy; to watch with keen vigilance the happenings in the public concerns; to gauge every measure taken by those in power by the true standard, recognizing gladly every step forward, and permitting nothing to pass that is not genuine; to aid the authorities whenever possible with information and candid counsel; to expose to the public eye the abuses they discover, the correction of which is refused;—in one word, to tell the people the truth without favor and without fear. A resolute and persevering appeal to public opinion, to the good sense and patriotism of such a people as ours, will not be in vain. So good a cause, supported by dauntless devotion, can never fail.

FOR THE REPUBLIC OF WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN'

It is not mere light-minded hero-worship that moves the American people to celebrate the anniversary of Washington's birth as a National holiday. Preeminent among the monumental figures of the world's history stand the founders of nations; and preeminent among them stands he

'An address delivered at the Philadelphia Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Feb. 22, 1900.