To every person requesting to enter the classified service a blank application paper is sent. The filling of this paper is the first step in the applicant's examination. In the proper blanks he gives his name, age, residence, and occupation for each of the past five years, and such other facts in regard to himself and his experience, education, and qualifications as are important to be known. All these statements are made under oath, and are required to be confirmed by the vouchers of not less than three nor more than five persons, who state, in blank certificates on the same sheet, their knowledge of the applicant and their belief of the truth of his statements, and vouch for his character, capacity, and good reputation. No recommendations outside of these vouchers are allowed to be received or considered by the Commission, the examiners, or the appointing officers. (See section 10 of act.)

The application thus filled is returned to the Commission or to the proper Examining Board, and if its statements show that the applicant is regularly vouched for, and that he is entitled by age, health, and citizenship to be examined for the service he seeks, his name is entered upon the proper record, with the date of his application, and his paper is placed on file. When the next examination is held, at a point which seems convenient for him, he is notified to be present.

If the applications on file at any office are in excess of the number that can be examined at one time, the earlier applicants, by Rule 13, are summoned first; except that at Washington the duty of apportionment may require those to be first examined who are from States whose qualified applicants are in deficient numbers. This excludes all preference of applicants through favor or patronage, and is in the spirit of the act, section 5, which makes all willful and corrupt obstruction of the right of examination a criminal offense. The applicants who are in excess of the number that can be examined at one time stand first upon the record to be notified for the next examination. Examinations are held as frequently as the needs of the service require. Thus far all applicants (except some from the District of Columbia, where the number is excessive, and in one or two similar cases outside) have been notified to attend the first examinations held after their applications were received.

The application paper is itself a sort of preliminary examination. It asks the same questions that any wise and experienced business man or appointing officer would desire to ask concerning the circumstances, health, character, and experience of the applicant, and it frequently deters from the examinations unworthy or incompetent persons, who find themselves unable to answer satisfactorily the inquiries proposed, or unwilling to give the information asked for. Of the hungry host of place-seekers, many are weeded out by the necessity of making this sworn statement of their career, while to genuine and worthy applicants it opens the way for the proper statement of their qualifications.

WHO MAY COMPETE.

A competition theoretically perfect would be one in which every person, from any part of the country, could compete for every vacancy. But the needs of the public business, as well as the provisions of the act that the examination shall be practical, and shall fairly test the capacity and fitness needed for discharging the duties of the place sought, require limitations. The qualifications needed for carriers or for weighers, for example, are quite different from those needed for copyists, or for some grades of clerks. Questions appropriate for ordinary clerkships would be unfit tests for telegraphers, or Pension-Office examiners. Provision is therefore made under which the application paper designates the grade or description of places sought; and it follows that the real competition is between all those who seek the same grade or places..

Further than this, the act, by requiring the appointments to the service at Washington to be apportioned among the States, Territories, and the District of Columbia, practically makes the competition between those from the same State or Territory, rather than an inter-State competition. In some cases, perhaps, this State competition may put into the service a person inferior to the one whom the broader competition would have supplied. But it gives to each State and Territory, what it has not yet had, a proportion of the appointments numerically due to its population, and it will unquestionably stimulate education in the States as well as increase the local interest in all matters affecting the administration of the Federal Government.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS.

Every provision of law favorable to those who have rendered honorable service in the Army or Navy of the United States is preserved in the civil service act and the rules; and in the latter (see Rule XI) these patriotic privileges have been in the matter of age and otherwise somewhat extended. Every person honorably discharged from such service by reason of disability incurred in the line of duty, if he shall exhibit the measure of capacity found to be essential in the civil service, is allowed a preference.

SUBJECTS FOR EXAMINATION.

The branches embraced in the general examinations for ordinary clerkships and other places of the same grade, are given in Rule 7. In none of these branches do the questions go further than is covered by the ordinary instruction in the common schools of the country. A limited examination is provided under Clause 4 of Rule 7, for copyists, messengers, carriers, night inspectors, and other employés of similar grades, including only a part of the branches above named, the subjects and questions being varied in number and grade to meet the require

ments of the different parts of the service. This allows persons of only limited attainments to secure the positions for which they are competent. The common-school education must have been exceedingly defective which does not enable one to pass this examination.

It will be noticed that, even in the general or higher grade of examination, under Clause I of Rule 1, proficiency in the first three subjects secures eligibility for appointment. Therefore failure in the last two will exclude no one from the service, though a good standing therein raises the grade of the applicant and gives him the better chances for an appointment.

If any shall notice with regret that only common-school education is exacted for entering the public service at the higher grade, and that thus only small direct reward is offered to academic and college learning, it may be remembered, on the other hand, that both by rewarding excellence in the common schools and by barring out corrupt influence from public office, learning of every grade, and good character and manly effort in every position are stimulated and strengthened. The common schools are the gates to the academies and the academies are the gates to the colleges.

It should always be a paramount object to keep the public service freely open to as many of the people as have the ability and information needed for doing its work. The best informed and most meritorious of those who enter it will be likely to win the higher prizes through promotion when once the merit system for admission shall be fairly estab lished. And though the higher education is not necessary in order to gain admission to the public service, it will nevertheless prove its value in the mastery of the principles and methods of that service, and so gain higher consideration, and give increased power to those who possess it.

SPECIAL AND TECHNICAL EXAMINATIONS.

While only the common-school education is required of the applicant for the ordinary clerkships and subordinate places in the classified service, there are other places, comparatively few in number, for which higher qualifications are requisite. Among these are clerkships in the State Department, which demand some knowledge of modern languages and of other special subjects; assistant examiners, draughtsmen, and other places requiring technical knowledge or skill, in the Patent Office; pension examiners and other clerkships in several Departments requiring some knowledge of law; draughtsmen and other employés in the Supervising Architect's Office and Engineer Department and employés in other technical or scientific Bureaus or divisions of the service. Rule 7, Clause 5, provides for the special examinations for such places. Special Boards of Examiners have already been designated in the State Department, the Patent Office, and the Pension Bureau. Special examinations have been held of a telegrapher for the Department of Justice, and a

topographic draughtsman for the Engineer Department. These two examinations were non-competitive, the need of filling the vacancies being urgent, and only one applicant offering in each case. They are the only non-competitive examinations which have thus far been held under the rules.

QUESTIONS AND EXAMINATIONS.

In order to secure uniformity and justice, the questions for the examinations are almost invariably prepared by the Commission, those for any Examining Board outside of Washington being forwarded for its use just before an examination is to be held. They are printed upon sheets with adequate space below each question for writing the answer or solution. The applicant gets his first knowledge of the questions as the sheets are given him, one after the other as his work advances, at his examination table. The examinations are open to such spectators as can be accommodated without interfering with the quiet due to those being examined, but the answers are not exhibited without the consent of the person who wrote them. The question sheets, with the answers thereon, are preserved as a part of the permanent records of the Commission, so that the fairness of the marking and grading can be tested as well a year as a week after they are made. In Appendix No. 5 are given examples (except that for brevity the answer spaces are omitted) of the several grades of questions, being the same actually used on several of the general and limited examinations, and they are a fair specimen of the average character of the whole. It is hardly necessary to add that, except in the very few examinations needed for places requiring technical or scientific knowledge, no questions more difficult have been used. The examples in arithmetic do not go beyond the needs of the public business. Every question in geography, history, or government is confined to that of the United States. Not a word of a foreign language, nor a technical term of art or science, nor any example in algebra, geometry, or trigonometry has been employed in any one of the general or limited examinations, and these examinations alone are used for at least ninety-five out of every hundred places within the classified service.

MARKING AND GRADING.

The rules and regulations contain sufficient explanation of the methods pursued in marking and grading. That work is done by the Boards of Examiners, and while doing it they do not know whose papers they are marking. (See Regulation 21.) This saves the examiners from bias and from suspicion of partiality.

*

* At the smaller offices those examined may, by handwriting or otherwise, be known to the examiners, but in such offices the temptations to injustice are less, and no complaint of that nature has been made to the Commission.

The grave responsibility and the guarantees of fairness under which the markings and gradings are made are to be found in the penal clause of the fifth section of the act and in Rules 8 and 23.

It has been found practicable to attain a high degree of uniformity and certainty in these markings, and the appeals to the Commission for their revision have been very small in proportion to the numbers examined, hardly two cases in a hundred.

So much uniformity, however, has not been attained without much care. In the first attempts some diversity in applying the standards for marking and grading was perhaps inevitable between the different local Boards. But the same standard was applied to all those examined for the same office, thus avoiding all injustice.

The example in marking and grading, given in the regulations, sufficiently illustrates the method. It will be seen that a failure in one question, or even failures in several of the fifteen to thirty questions, need not prevent the applicant's securing the required grade. High proficiency in one subject may cover deficiencies in others; therefore, ability to get into the service can in no case depend upon an answer to any one or two questions, or even entirely upon the information shown upon any one subject. Yet it should be said that bad penmanship seriously threatens failure in competing for positions as copyists, or for clerkships of the lower grade, where penmanship is especially important.

THE APPORTIONMENT.

The apportionment of new appointments at Washington is to be made to States and Territories according to population, as ascertained at the last preceding census. The number that will fall to any one of them within a year cannot be accurately known, because the whole number of vacancies is not known beforehand. Following the apportionment of representation in Congress, which is also based upon population as ascertained at the last census, the certification to fill vacancies is made as nearly as possible in the same ratio. It may not be at any moment mathematically exact, but in the year will be as nearly complete as the appearance of proper persons from the several States and Territories will allow.

It will be noticed that the appointments already made to the service have been made from twenty-six States and Territories.*

RESIDENCE.

In the application paper the residence of all applicants must be stated under oath. The question whether legal or mere temporary residence is intended arises under this law as well as under so many

* From the District of Columbia there have been two appointments in excess, which resulted from an unanticipated selection of more than one from a single certification to a Department, a thing not likely to happen again.