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of that rule, or whenever an office already under the competitive rule is without the clearest necessity withdrawn from it and is thus made a matter of patronage commanded by influence, the people are robbed of their right of free competition for that public employment. That right cannot be too jealously guarded, especially by the men and women who are poor, or without influential backing, or too self-respecting to make themselves dependent upon the favor of the powerful instead of their own work, and who, when serving the public, will not make themselves anybody's political slaves. It is in the competitive rule alone that they find a guarantee of a fair and equal chance, and they have every reason to hold to stern account any man in power and any political party that is weak or wicked enough to participate or acquiesce in any attempt to subvert or only to curtail the right of the people to that equality of opportunity, that independence of influence and favoritism, which true democracy demands. And the efforts of certain politicians to repeal the civil service law or to restrict its operation, are clearly a war upon this right.
The first practical attack was made in New York where Governor Black sounded the keynote by proclaiming his desire to “take the starch out of civil service,” whereupon the Legislature followed with a law making an artful distinction between “merit” and “fitness”—a distinction without a difference, never heard of before—and providing that each candidate for a place in the classified service shall have to pass two examinations,—one for “merit” to be conducted by the established civil-service boards, and the other for “fitness” to be conducted by the appointing officers themselves in such manner as they may see fit to adopt, oral or in writing, public or secret. Inasmuch as the value of such examinations is shown by experience to rest upon the independence of their management from the appointing power, it was safe to predict that the practical result of the operation of this law would be the virtual annihilation of the competitive system prescribed by the State Constitution of New York. And this has substantially been the case wherever the dual examination system was applied, while some public departments appointed the existing civil-service boards as their examiners, which in so far set a limit to the restoration of the spoils system. But the new law stands in such glaring
