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The Reform of the Consular Service.
CARL SCHURZ.
FOR many years various Chambers of Commerce as well as other organizations of business men have been urgently demanding a reform of our consular service. The reasons given for this demand are so justly and eloquently set forth in the last report of the United States Civil Service Commission that I can do no better than quote its language:
“Our consular service has attained to-day an importance far beyond that which it had in any previous period of our history. So long as our exports were confined to a few agricultural products, and we sold our manufactured goods mostly at home, the foreign consul was a man of comparatively little importance. But we have entered upon a new phase of our national career. We have become the foremost productive nation in the world. All other countries, even those of Europe, are full of undeveloped possibilities and enormous industrial changes are going on furnishing opportunities for the indefinite extension of our commerce. This is the time for America to seize the opportunities and to use its special genius for organization and invention in extending its industrial preeminence. A great deal has been done already with very imperfect governmental machinery and more highly developed individual initiative.—To maintain and increase our industrial prominence we ought to have by far the best consular service in the world. We should have the quickest and most reliable information as to our opportunities, as well as business representatives who are able to improve them. This can only be done by a consular service which is uniformly instructed and alert.
“Under our present system of patronage appointments there is little security that the men appointed are qualified for their duties. In some places, notably in important positions, in Great Britain, Germany, and other European countries, we have been fortunate enough to secure men not only of the highest natural capacity, but admirably equipped, and their consular reports have been a credit to the service and of immense value to our commerce. But in other positions, especially the smaller ones, the political removals and appointments which had been
