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officer is now compelled to admit—and the more conscientious
he is, the more emphatically he will admit it—that
those branches of the public service in which the civil
service rules, and especially the competitive principle, are
most strictly enforced, the work to be done is most
attentively attended to and most satisfactorily performed. And
although it has been asserted by the detractors of the
merit system—and with an appearance of truth—that
competitive examinations cannot test a candidate's integrity
of character, many years's experience has proved beyond
question that among the public servants who entered the
service upon competitive examination, the number of
cases of official dishonesty has been infinitesimally small
compared with the number of such cases among those
who obtained their places by mere political influence or
favoritism.
We have in this respect just now a most instructive object-lesson. You have heard of the Bristow report on the scandals in the Post-Office Department, and of President Roosevelt's memorandum accompanying the publication of that report. If you have not read these documents, I advise you to do so without delay. You will find that the President did a most meritorious thing in ordering an investigation of certain branches of that department, in seeing to it that this investigation be thorough, and in publishing the results of it. You will also be struck with the fact that of all the public servants who were, in consequence of that investigation, indicted for fraud or other malfeasance, not one had come into the service by regular competitive examination. Only one had gone through a competition, not for entrance, but for promotion. All of them had originally obtained their appointments by political influence or personal favor. And it is to be noted as peculiarly significant that in several cases the positions to which they have been appointed, were excepted from the competitive rule on the ground so solemnly insisted upon by the patronage monger, that they were places of a confidential or fiduciary character requiring a peculiar degree of integrity and trustworthiness, of which no competitive examination could furnish
