found of carrying on successful work without it. But what of the years to come? With the classification of the great body of Federal employees below the grade of Presidential appointments substantially complete, except for the gigantic scandal of a spoils Prohibition enforcement service, and with even important Presidential nominations determined by competitive tests, is the future problem merely one of meticulous attention to details? The merest glance at conditions and the barest realization of the complexities of administration entailed by the recent enormous extension of government activities will bring an emphatic answer.

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In March, 1920, a Congressional Joint Commission laid before Congress a report on the condition of the service that showed gross extravagance and waste,' ""unbusinesslike handling of service," "poor organization," "divided authority," "much injustice and inefficiency," "serious discontent among the Federal employees," and a turnover of 33 per cent., a rate of change demoralizing to any work, especially as it is due to the steady exodus of the most efficient employees. The Commission reported that the United States was "without a central employment agency having adequate powers; in short without an employment policy". The result is "glaring inequalities and incongruities in salary schedules", much injustice and dissatisfaction, wasted money and failure to get the work paid for.

The Government was a pioneer in seeking to establish merit as a basis of employment. But private industry has learned the lesson, and while the Government has lagged behind, private employers have gone on to systematize their forces, to adopt scientific methods of recruiting, testing and stimulating efficiency, promoting contentment and eliminating waste. The United States is trying to do the work of a twentieth century Government, with its far flung activities in every field of science and industry, by methods inherited from the eighteenth century, by confused, overlapping organizations, by employees whose pay bears little or no relation to the character of their service and whose conditions of labor and chance of advancement for efficiency rather than by favor are such as to discourage energy and loyalty.

As a result, over 75 per cent. of the Federal employees are enrolled in organizations affiliated with industrial trade unions. The failure of the Government to provide any legitimate channel for the presentation of their grievances and the correction of the injustices that are bound to occur in the operation of a great force has naturally driven them to seek in the American Federation of Labor an opportunity for making their demands influential. This affiliation has been frowned upon by many high officials, including President Roosevelt, but since his administration little resistance has been offered to it except by PostmasterGeneral Burleson. "The National Federation of Federal Employees," declared its official organ, The Federal Employe, some months ago, "is a union which does not strike, but it is not powerless, it goes into districts in which it has enemies and works hard to keep them out of Congress." This combination of Government employees and trade unionists to pull each other's chestnuts out of the fire has ominous possibilities. French experience throws light on them. If the danger here seems fanciful in view of federation bylaws forbidding strikes in Government service, consider this hint from the same organ:

Let us bring the main problem down to practical terms and consider what would happen to a union employe who found his duty to this Government and his duty to his union in conflict. It is to be presumed that he would do precisely what he does when he finds his duty to his Church, to his lodge or to his family to be in conflict with his duty to his Government; that is, he would decide which is the more important to him.

We do not need to question the usefulness of the labor union in its field, nor of the association of public employees in its field. But, even though strikes are barred by the latter, such bylaws can be repealed, or may be ignored at a crisis. The existence in Government service of a body of men closely bound to an outside organization, whose interests at any moment may conflict with those of another part of the community resulting in struggle and perhaps even clashes with public authority, invites burrowing within the Government itself for the defeat of its measures, which may be just as disastrous as a walkout from official service. And on the other hand, to put at the beck of Federal employees a great external body able and ready to back up their demands,

reasonable and unreasonable, not only by political pressure but by its accustomed weapons of industrial warfare, is to put the Government itself into a class rivalry with an organized section of its own citizens. Such an association goes far toward turning Government workers into a Prætorian Guard.

In face of this situation the Congressional Joint Commission submitted a bill that failed to provide the much needed comprehensive employment system, but contained what was thought the temper of Congress would stand. Nearly three years have passed with nothing accomplished. Congress is apathetic, departmental jealousies are influential, and the employees' organization, while insistent on redress of grievances, is cold toward thoroughgoing systematization, or anything that promises weeding out of inefficiency. It sees none. And as an organization it flourishes and gains members so long as it agitates for advance to the Promised Land, without entering it.

Shortly before his election, President Harding wrote:

The time has come for the federal government to organize its agencies of employment in accordance with the principles which have been tested and approved by the best modern business practice. It is outrageous for public administration, which should be an example and a guide to our people, to indulge in waste and extravagant inefficiency. Though the necessity for a budget system is great, perhaps even greater is the need for a system which will give federal employes a square deal in promotions, pay and continuity of service while obtaining for the nation's taxpayers, in return, a high standard of skill and continued loyalty among the employes who serve them.

That is not an extravagant programme. It is perfectly possible of realization, at least so far as a Government, which is not under the necessity of earning profits, can be made to function with the business precision of private industry. First, it is necessary to abolish the divided authority that comes from one body supervising admission to the service while others study questions of efficiency. The United States Civil Service Commission should receive power adequate to the establishment of a national employment system. The whole personnel question should be put in its hands and the various executive officers relieved of having to deal with it piecemeal, just as such officers in great industrial establishments are relieved of it. Then, if

endowed with sufficient power and money, the Commission, always subject to the limits of a budget, could be expected to grade the service so that salaries would be related to the character of employment and equal pay would be given for equal work.

Many salaries are now too low, others too high, and the differences between departments and even different persons in the same office are a galling injustice. At present the work of the lowest grade of filing clerk is carried on under 105 different titles, with 25 different rates of pay. The proper grouping of places would correct this and make for better methods of testing fitness and for economy of examinations. It would provide a standardized, mobile force that could be sent from one department to another as need arose, thus avoiding the extravagant overmanning of offices to meet their peak loads. Great opportunity exists for the development of the examination system in the light of psychologic research and the experience of modern business, but the Commission has lacked funds. The whole matter of Federal promotions is in chaos, and the Civil Service Commission is without authority. A system of promotion examinations should be established and incident to it a system of efficiency records that would open the door to earned advancement or deserved dismissal. The entire task of perfecting entrance tests, determining relative efficiency in the service, providing opportunities for advancement, and discovering the unfit should be brought under one centralized control. The apathy or tenderheartedness of appointing officers, who would not have hesitated to make political removals under the spoils system, with respect to inefficient classified subordinates, brings a heavy burden on the taxpayers and undeserved discredit on the merit system.

All these are necessary preliminary steps toward the development of a really scientific personnel system. The whole field of public service outside of the heads of departments and such subordinates as are concerned in determining public policies must be co-ordinated and taken out of the category of party patronage. Beyond lies the more difficult question of machinery for the redress of grievances. Some believe that the Civil Service Commission should provide this. Others believe that discipline can

only be enforced by leaving arbitrary power with office heads. But whatever mean may be taken between these two extremes, certainly some way must be found to secure fair consideration of the often reasonable complaints of employees, to open the door to suggestions for improvement by them and give them that legitimate influence over the conditions of their employment that enlightened private industry no longer denies. Take away from them pressure to affiliate with outside organizations because no other instrument for self protection seems to be at their hands, and such affiliation can be forbidden. Indeed it will scarcely need to be forbidden, for the alliance is not a natural one. But unless measures are taken to give employees a sense of fair treatment and partnership in their work, so that they are no longer mute and helpless under arbitrary superiors and a far-away and indifferent Congress, this alliance will continue with increasing

menace.

The Civil Service reforms of 1883 checked customs that threatened to swamp American statemanship and turn American politics into a mere base struggle for spoils. But the work is not finished. In more than three-fourths of the States of the Union the spoils system still dominates administration and bedevils politics. Down into the city and county services of a larger part of the country the political parties reach for the nourishment with which they build their organizations. There can come no healthy politics of ideas from creatures so fed. President Butler of Columbia University recently declared that "today the division of office holders, office seekers, and the voting public into Republicans and Democrats means little or nothing except struggle for public place and public authority". He strikingly drew attention to the lack of fundamental differences between the parties and made a plea for such reconstruction that they may really function as the exponents of vital and clearly differentiated principles. But how can sincerity and courage in the exposition of ideas, or even an agreement on national party policy, be expected from parties made up of State, county and city organizations dominated by and in turn largely concerned with the patronage of their own localities?

The establishment of the Federal merit system only half