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Some Object Lessons.
HON. CARL SCHURZ.
PERMIT me a few remarks on some aspects of civil service reform which, indeed, are not new, but cannot too often be pressed upon public attention.
The reform of the civil service, as we advocate it, aims at two objects: To secure to the people an honest and efficient public service, and to eliminate, as much as possible, the demoralizing element of patronage and political and personal favoritism from our public life. The first is accomplished by subjecting candidates for public employment to examinations and probations testing their fitness for such employment; and the second by making such examinations competitive, so as to give the fittest man the best chance for appointment, and to exclude appointment by favoritism, personal or political, and thus the use of the office concerned as party spoil. This is not a matter of abstract theory, but of simple practical common sense.
We do not pretend that civil service reform, if ever so successfully carried on, will prove a panacea for all the ills the body politic is heir to; that it will furnish a public service in point of efficiency and honesty absolutely perfect; or that it will entirely banish from public life corruption and the use of official power and opportunity for ends of private selfishness. But we do maintain that, so far as public employments have been subjected to civil service rules of this character, and so far as these rules have been enforced with faithful thoroughness, the public service has been greatly improved in point of efficiency, honesty, and general character. This is no longer a matter of conjecture, but of actual experience, recognized by every fair-minded man. Civil service reform has with signal success passed the period of uncertain trial. Every executive
