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The story of that Governor of New York who undertook to take the starch out of the civil service of his State, is familiar to you all. He did indeed succeed in taking out of the civil service much of the starch it contained, although, thanks to the watchful energy of the friends of civil service reform in the State, by no means as much as he had intended. But now, having been dropped by those whom he had sought to serve, but, it seems, whom after all he did not serve enough to keep their favor, he will be succeeded by a new Governor, Col. Roosevelt, who in whatever other respects some of us may differ with him, is hailed by all of us as a champion of civil service reform, who in many a hard fought contest for that cause has amply proved that in his composition there was starch in almost limitless abundance. We may therefore confidently expect that, so far as his power reaches, we shall not only recover the ground temporarily lost under his predecessor, but advance beyond it to new fields. At any rate, in the co-operation between Governor Roosevelt and the civil service reformers of the State, good faith and energy will not be wanting, and as there is no doubt that the best part of the intelligence and respectability of that great Commonwealth stands behind them, a happy outcome may surely be hoped for.
From Illinois, too, where since the adoption of the merit system in Chicago, long and somewhat confused struggles have been going on concerning its scope, we have the welcome news of important victories won by the civil service reformers in the Courts.
In far-away San Francisco also, a new city charter has been adopted by a majority of 4,000 votes, after a contest carried on mainly on the civil service issue; and from many other cities we are receiving evidences of hopefully rising interest in our cause.
The present situation may therefore, be summed-up thus: The national administration has so far failed to redeem the pledge contained in the platform upon which it was elected—not only to “enforce the civil service laws honestly and thoroughly,” but also to “extend it wherever practicable;” and various abuses have been allowed to creep into the conduct of the civil service which have had the effect of nullifying the spirit and intent of the law and of the rules in a considerable number of cases. It is gladly ack-
