Baltimore, Md.; Charles J. Bonaparte, John C. Rose, J. Hemsley
Johnson, W. Hall Harris, Daniel Miller, J. P. Brown, T. E.

Carson, William Winchester, George A. Pope, Skipwith
Wilmer, E. G. Daves.

Cambridge, Mass.; Morrill Wyman, Jr., Richard N. Tappan,
William Russell Howland, Charles Theodore Russell, Jr.
Chicago, Ill.; Franklin MacVeagh, James S. Norton.

Cleveland, O.; W. E. Cushing.

Elkton, Md.; John S. Wirt.

Geneva, N. Y.; A. P. Rose.

Indiana; Wm. Dudley Foulke.

Malden, Mass.; W. B. de las Casas.

Missouri; J. A. Young.

New York, N. Y.; George William Curtis, Everett P. Wheeler, Carl Schurz, Edward Cary, Silas W. Burt, Charles Collins, Henry Villard, Dorman B. Eaton, Hamilton B. Tomkins, J. Lawrence McKeever, Jacob F. Miller, C. W. Watson, George R. Bishop.

Norwich, Conn.; Gen. W. A. Aiken, F. T. Sayles, Adam Reed.
Philadelphia, Pa.; R. Francis Wood, Herbert Welsh, Frank

Woodbury, M.D., W. W. Montgomery, Joseph Parrish, J. J.
Pinkerton, Edward S. Sayres, J. G. Francis, E. M. Wistar,
Stuart Wood, Thomas Stewardson, William Moss, M.D.,
W. Herbert Washington, H. W. Bartol, Archibald R. Mont-
gomery.

Rochester, N. Y.; Porter Farley.

Virginia; Launcelot M. Blackford, M.A.

To Balance on hand Sept. 25, '91..

33.80

$138.80

Interest, Continental Trust Co.

16.67

358.47

E. & O. E.

WILLIAM POTTS,

$1,700.07

NEW YORK, April 30, 1892.

Treasurer.

THE APPLICATION OF CIVIL-SERVICE

RULES TO PUBLIC LABORERS.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES THEODORE RUSSELL, Jr.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE :—I congratulate the League that, although its work continues to be mainly missionary and militant, there are some churches and mission-stations established that are at least selfsupporting. While the work of the Civil-Service Reformer is still

apostolic, the apostles of the Reform are now encouraged, as in the early Church, by reports, not only of what is said, but of

what has been done.

I

Cannot address you with the world-famed eloquence of our

distinguished President upon Civil Service as a desired reform. I

can

speak only as one of the administrators of a law in Massachu setts as well accepted, as well adapted to the requirements of our public service, as well recognized and as easily enforced, as any law our Legislature ever placed upon the Statute Book.

and

That law, carefully drafted in 1884, by a committee of able

practical members of the Massachusetts Association, with

the sole desire to formulate in statute the reform they had at heart, was accepted by the Legislature of that year.

With eight years of experience in its administration, I pay the framers of it the tribute of saying that, although the system inaugurated in the statute of their creation was novel and radical, their Act has never required construction or enforcement by our

courts, and has never met with other opposition than the complimentary fire of the ambushed guerilla.

The Massachusetts statute differs from the previouslyadopted National and New York Acts,- First, in giving to the Civil Service Commissioners the entire power to classify the public service and prepare Civil Service rules, subject only to approval by the Governor and Council; and secondly, in the requirement that the Commissioners shall "prepare rules . . . . for the selection of persons to fill offices in the government of the Common. wealth and of the several cities thereof, which are required to be filled by appointment, and for the selection of persons to be employed as laborers, or otherwise, in the service of the Commonwealth and of the several cities thereof."

This was the Legislative mandate to the Commissioners. In classifying the other and higher branches of the public service, and in preparing the rules regarding the application, examination, and certification, we had, as valuable precedents, the National and the New York rules. The obvious benefit of a uniform system led us to follow, as closely as the nature of the Massachusetts public service in State and city would allow, the previouslyadopted rules.

Massachusetts has never been a spoils-loving Commonwealth, nor has she ever bended the knee to the party boss. The evil of the spoils system was much more pronounced in city than in State administration, and there in the lower, rather than in the higher, grades of the public service. There was a spoils system in the labor-service of Boston that required remedy, and it was the intention of our Civil Service Act to provide one.

Boston employs about four thousand skilled and unskilled laborers in her many departments of service, requiring men representing over sixty different kinds of labor. Before 1885 the employment of these thousands of men was entirely in the control of the heads of departments, most of whom were then dependent upon annual election to office by the City Council, and now, un

der the amended city charter, are dependent for confirmation, after nomination by the mayor, upon the action of the aldermen.

Any of you veterans in the war against the spoils system knows what that power and that method of selection meant. Laborers were in many, if not in most, cases appointed nominally by the department, but actually by the alderman or councilman, or ward boss. Allegiance to party, or, still worse, to an individual, had become the "open sesame" to city labor. The evil had reached such advancement (as every attempt to loot the public service will reach, unless controlled by law) that the labor service was practically parcelled out among the city fathers, each of them having so many tickets entitling bearer to so many days' labor at the expense of the taxpayers of Boston. These tickets were distributed among those who had proved faithful and efficient at the polls or in the caucus; or in some cases, where the city father had a frugal disposition, sold at auction in the bar-rooms of the city.

The evil of such a system was admitted. The difficult question was how to remedy it. That question was novel. It launched the Massachusetts Commissioners upon an untried sea, and obliged them to prepare both chart and compass. The advice of able and devoted leaders in the reform, and of experienced administrators of Civil Service rules, was to let the labor-service alone. We were told that death or injury caused by the caving-in of a sewer bracing, or the untimely collapse of the mason's wall, through the negligence of laborers certified by Civil Service Commissioners, might involve the whole system in general wreck, by destroying all confidence in its applicability and efficiency.

The Commissioners considered three methods suggested for the classification and employment of public laborers.-First, appointment upon competitive or other examination; second, appointment by lot; and third, appointment by application of certain easily-understood and simply-applied tests, without examination.