fusing the voter dissipates popular control. If offices, other than general policy making offices, are elective, the voter has presented to him at the polls a ballot so long and complicated that any real judgement upon the relative merit of candidates becomes impossible. The voters are necessarily delivered into the power of the bosses and popular control becomes a fiction.

sues.

Have As Few Elective Offices As Possible

It is therefore imperative that the number of elective offices should be held within a reasonable compass so that the people may have a fair chance to decide intelligently upon candidates and isAll offices and places in the service, except general policy making offices, should be taken out of the elective or exempt class and included in the service under the provisions of a civil service law, if we are to remove the bureauratic menace which the spoils system offers to popular control of the government.

Merit The Only Proper Basis For Civil Service

Second, that public offices and places which are not directly charged with the conduct of general political policies belong of right to all of the people. It follows therefore that the civil service should be kept out of politics and opened to all citizens alike according to their relative ability and fitness to perform the duties of a particular office or place to be filled. There should be entire equality of opportunity for appointment and tenure of office on the basis of merit only. Victory at the polls confers no right upon the victors to seize the non-political offices or to interfere with the efficient conduct of public business. The civil service is the people's and nothing but the elective offices and the political policy making offices should be won or lost at an election. Merit or efficiency should be the only test for place in civil service. The public employe is the servant of all the people and not a part of the people.

To Secure Efficient Service

Third, that the civil service shall be efficient. As it is important that only fit men should be appointed to office after a thoro and impartial test of merit, so it is important that in their subsequent daily work, the same standard of merit should be maintained, so that the public may obtain the benefit of the merit system. Where public employes deteriorate through their own fault, they should be removed. If they detericrate because of conditions of employment which make good work impossible or unnecessarily difficult, these conditions should be corrected. The prompt and certain removal of incompetent employes, the correction of defective organization and defective conditions of employment, the training of employes, the task of getting competent men into the

public service and keeping them there, the correlation of their pay with the results achieved, the preparation of the budget in its employment, as distinguished from its financial features, and the maintenance of standards of efficiency are all employment problems which do not change with administrations, and which require constant expert treatment. The work of government under all political policies and parties should be well done. The people are entitled to it.

Fourth, that the government in its capacity as an employer should be just as fair to its own employes. It follows therefore that a civil service law should protect the civil service employees from demoralizing and improper influences, should recognize the moral and social dignity of their work, reward efficient service, create for them proper conditions of employment and by maintaining reasonable standards of employment set an example to private employers of how to be fair and just.

To render these four principles of merit system effective, it is obvious that the body charged with their administration, usually known as a civil service commission, composed of experts in the science of employment, that for the purpose of the merit system they must have jurisdiction over the whole subject of employment from the point where it is proposed to create a position through to the point where the position is abolished, and the employe in it pensioned, removed or laid off, that the civil service commission should be responsible to the people and removable by any citizen for causes analogous to those which may result in removal of any other civil servant, and that the commission should not be controlled by or be responsible to any political officer.

Civil Service Must Be Responsible To The People

Civil service commissionerships should themselves be classified and should be filled only after competitive test, the candidate standing highest on the list to be certified and appointed. For this, as in other high administrative offices, not involving party policies, the main reasons are, first, to take commsisionerships out of politics, second to insure the selection of competent commissioners, and third, to give commissioners tenure during good behavior like other officers in the classified service having to do with administrative policies. It is anomalous and indefensible to allow the highest civil service office itself to be and remain a spoils position.

A commissioners task is to obtain and keep the best available corps of public servants the public will pay for. All partisans and all applicants should look alike to him.

The evil effects of free appointment of civil service commissioners are similar to the evil effects of other political appointments to administrative offices, except that they are intensified

by the importance of the office and made conspicious by the failure to apply the merit test to the very men who apply it to public servants generally. To say that the responsibility of a chief executive will be lost, if free appointment and removal be taken away, is precisely what has been said about every position in the competitive service. The only justification for a political appointment is that the office so filled has to deal with political policies. A seat at the service board is not a political policy making position. It is therefore no part of a governor's or mayor's administration. "If we are to have civil service" said a prominent party leader, "take the commissioners out of politics. When the patronage is lost to the 'ins' as well as to the 'outs' all factions and parties will be even. But let there be no shams. The officer who appoints and removes the commissioners will control or be thought to control the civil service. The employes will take their tone from him. and play politics for him. Nor can you enforce efficiency measures. Efficiency is not popular after election. What should be done is to put the civil service commission where nobody can interfere with it and make it strong enough to keep the service on a non-partisan basis."

Proper Method for Removal Of Incompetent And Protection Of The Efficient

The practical application of the four principles of the merit system requires a just and business like method for the removal of inefficient employes and for the protection of efficient employes from improper removal. Public control over the administrative civil service should be simply and directly exercised. Efficient service should be assured and the growth of expert administration facilitated. The object, therefore, of the removal provision is to insure removals in proper cases according to standards of merit and fitness at the entrance to the service and to prevent removals which are destructive of efficient service.

There is no systematic business organization employing many men which does not have a superintendent of employment or a grievance committee. The power of removing subordinates is no longer left in the hands of the supervising officer, as he can not deal effectively with questions of personnel. The management of business and the direction of operations is thus made distinct from the employment and removal of employes and the scientific measuring of efficiency. The whole tendency of modern business organizations on a scale comparable to public service is to treat employment, efficiency checks, and removals, from a central office on the department plan of organization. The superintendent of employment makes the removals, attends to all efficiency matters, either alone or in conjuction with grievance committees or boards of inquiry often made up of representatives of men themselves and of the company. The operating officers may suspend or dismiss

their subordinates subject to review by the superintendent of employment, the grievance committee, or the board of inquiry. A law which makes merit principles effective and which achieves tangible and beneficial results is in this regard in accord with the best experience in business organizations and is supported by more than twenty years of experience in the service of states and cities.

Removal systems substantially similar to the system as above stated have long been in successful and practical operation in this country in jurisdictions such as Illinois and Chicago and in the progressive commonwealths of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Under such a system, in the absence of a change in the party in power, there may be twice as many removals as under the old system where the power of removal was left in the hands of the appointing officer. Under such a system when there is a change of party the service escapes the indiscriminate discharge for improper reasons which have been so long demoralizing the public service.

Insures Success of Public Ownership

Any citizen should have the right to apply to a board of inquiry for the removal of employes for just cause. The experience of large business concerns with employment departments of grievance committees points to the remedy for the failure of appointing officers in the public service to make removals which the interests of service demands. With out such removal provisions the service becomes clogged with the inefficient. Under this system of removals, there is, of course, no "court trial" or "suit in court.” It is a prompt and energetic exercise of administrative functions which dove-tails perfectly with the entrance examination. The public service is the people's permanent establishment, and a system of citizen control should be provided by which charges may be investigated and findings enforced. Such a system affords a remedy for removals upon secret charges, and it is just alike to the interests of the public service and the employe.

It is with the establishment therefore of the above statement upon which public ownership will measure up one hundred per cent efficient and successful.

IX. Public Ownership Movement
in Different Parts of Country

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IN MASSACHUSETTS

By Hon. Eugene N. Foss

Former Governor of Massachusets

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have been invited to tell you concerning the movement which has gained such headway in Massachusetts for the public ownership of public utilites, particularly the trolley lines. First, I want to review briefly the condition that exists there, for I believe it to be a little worse than in any other state in the Union.

Desperate Condition of Private Companies

The Boston Elevated, the leading and largest trolley line in Massachusetts, is now under public operation necessitated by the general conditions that now obtain in Massachusetts of the privately owned public utilities, and there has recently been collected from metropolitan Boston $4,000,000 deficit in operation. The Bay State line, the next largest in Massachusetts, has already abandoned 100 miles of its trackage, and is contemplating the abandonment of 200 more out of a gross mileage of 800 miles. The Company has recently passed from a receiver's hands to a banker's reorganization at terrrific cost, and labor troubles, which it is now facing, seem to be the last straw in the struggle of private ownership. These two companies represent 46 per cent in mileage, and 72 per cent of invested capital in Massachusetts. In Berkshire County, in the western part of the state, the splendid trolley system of approximately 150 miles has been shut down and the cars put in the barn. The Big Consolidated, in the central part of the state, owned by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, is advancing fares to seven cents and the people are up in arms over this and vexatious zone systems. All over the state in many places where once was a trolley line, there are now two streaks of rust and from Cape Cod to the Berkshires the same story is here and there shown.

Private Ownership Breaks Down

Such, in brief, are the conditions that exist in Massachusetts and so bad had they become that, in the early part of this year, I was solicited to bring the matter before the public, and advocate public ownership, and see if some relief could not be obtained from the conditions that exist. Fares have risen as high as ten cents,