by the Senate. Having in view the whole background of the work of civil service commissions and in accordance with our conviction that you do not get good administration from a multiple-headed body but only in the administration process from a single head, we thought it was the better plan to select the United States Civil Service Administrator by a competitive system. Therefore, this board of seven, appointed by the President, with overlapping terms, confirmed by the Senate, is authorized to set up an examining board which will make an examination, a Nation-wide competitive examination, and report to the President the three highest names.

Representative VINSON. Don't you think the fact that you would hold a competitive examination would automatically exclude some of the very best men in the country for this position, who might be available if such competitive examination was not held?

Mr. BROWNLOW. No, sir; because if you follow the best personnel practice in Government and in private practice the board of examiners would invite various men to take that examination.

Representative VINSON. You did not get my point. I am not speaking about the invitation not including them, but it occurs to me that the mere fact that they had to submit themselves to a competitive examination would exclude some of the very best executive and administrative minds in the country.

Representative TABER. You would not get anything but a candidate, in other words.

Mr. BROWNLOW. No; you could invite persons who would not present themselves necessarily as candidates. I do not know just the type of man, Mr. Vinson, that you have in mind, who would be. excluded.

Representative VINSON. I am not speaking of their being excluded from the invitation, but it is a question of accepting the invitation. That is the point. I say that it would be the very best executive minds, who certainly would be able to administer this law most satisfactorily, who would not accept your invitation and take the competitive examination.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Vinson means, and I think he says, that the mere act of requiring a civil-service examination would prompt many of the best executives who might otherwise be available to refrain from taking the examination, and those who took the examination might be of an inferior ability. What is the advantage of limiting the President's power to a group of three selected in the manner that the bill provides? That is the question he asks.

Mr. BROWNLow. In the first place, may I say that of course the examination would not be an examination of a clerical type and not necessarily a written examination. It might be by the presentation of documents and books that had been written, but it would be a broad examination.

The CHAIRMAN. It would be any examination that the Board saw fit to require.

Mr. BROWNLOw. The reason then, to reply to the second part of your question, Mr. Chairman, the reason is that a little more than 50 years ago, when the civil service was introduced into the Government of the United States, and which has been gradually extended every few years during the 50 years, the concept was the negative concept of a protection of the service against the excessive evils

of the spoils system. Therefore, a bipartisan board was set up and great advances have been made under that Commission. But the time has come, in the judgment of this committee, and of a great many other students of the problem, when the positive phases of personnel management must be considered, not merely the protective phases, and the Government must be able to go out and enlist the most capable men and women in the country to enter on careers in the administrative work of the United States.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Of course, that is the objection that is being raised to what you say, namely, that this system that you propose automatically excludes some of the very best persons in the country and opens the door almost alone to those who happen to be either applicants for a job or those who are in the civil service.

Mr. BROWNLOW. It does not close the door, in my judgment, as much as the system of political appointment which very largely limits positions of that character in Federal, State, and local governments to the members of one political party, to the members of one faction within that political party, and to the people who have certain political backing. In this position, where one man is to become the Administrator of the civil service of the entire United States, in our judgment, the man should be chosen under the principle of the merit system itself in the same manner that the people that are going to work for him are chosen.

Senator BARKLEY. Right there I can agree with you on the general principle of Government employees, but here is an administrator over all the Government force; in salary and importance he is placed on almost an equality with any Cabinet officer. This provision limits the President's power of appointment to those who are seeking the job and makes it impossible for him to draft anybody who might not be an office seeker, who might not be out after the job, and who would not want to go through the minutiae of taking the civil-service examination something like a rural mail carrier or a third-class post office.

Mr. BROWNLOW. It is not that type of examination, Senator.

Senator BARKLEY. No; it is not that type, but it is one that will be fixed by men who occupy an inferior position to the man who is to be appointed.

Mr. BROWNLOW. We base our recommendation on the other theory, that this would open up all of the capacities in the country for a review and examination so that the very best man might be found, and that the selection would not be limited by some of the practical limitations that are placed upon any President with respect to appointment to high positions.

Also, we think that the Civil Service Administrator himself would be protected, and the President, himself, and the other responsible heads of departments would also be protected, if the Civil Service Administrator were selected under the rules of the merit system, so he would not be, however good he might be, subject to the charge that he was a mere patronage broker appointed for political purposes by the President who happened to be in office at the time.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Mr. Brownlow, I will not ask you to answer this question, but I merely suggest it: Suppose in the instance of the appointment of the particular committee of which you are the head the President had been required to make the selections from a com

petitive list of persons who had applied for and taken the examination; how many members of the President's committee do you suppose would have taken such an examination?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Well, in the first place, I cannot go along with your hypothesis. A civil-service board such as we have suggested, having in mind its duty to select a board of examiners, would undoubtedly select a board of examiners which would invite every probably competent person in the country to take that examination. It would not be merely the men that made applications; it would not be merely the men that applied. We find that practice now in the higher positions in the civil service at all times. You go out and you ask people to take examinations, especially where certain technique is required.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Mr. Brownlow, is there any experience in this or other countries under merit systems of selecting people for positions of this kind-not exactly this same character, but I mean positions for men of the type desired or that would be desired, as I understand it, in keeping with the recommendations of this committee for this particular job?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes, Senator; the single administrator who carries on this work in the civil service of the State of Wisconsin is selected by a competitive examination.

Representative VINSON. That is in this country.

Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes.

Representative VINSON. I thought you said other countries.
Senator LA FOLLETTE. I said in this or any other country.
Representative VINSON. I beg your pardon.

Mr. BROWNLOW. That is the situation with respect to the city of Cincinnati. I may say that, in my opinion, the actual administration of the merit system in the State of Wisconsin and the city of Cincinnati are two of the best examples we have in this country. There are many others.

Senator BARKLEY. You divide these positions into policy making and nonpolicy making; I realize that a Civil Service Administrator would not be expected nor empowered to inaugurate policies of government, but he would have a good deal to say about the policy under which the civil-service laws were administered, as to examinations and limitations and all that. My experience and observation has been that a lot of so-called non-policy-making subordinates here in Washington make a great many of the policies that are adopted by the departments. How are you going to decide absolutely between the man who can make a policy and one who cannot?

Mr. BROWNLOW. You have brought up two different questions there. With respect to the proposed Civil Service Administrator, he is not set down as a non-policy-determining officer. He is policy determining. He is appointed by the President, and he is to be confirmed by the Senate, and he is only brought within this other means of appointment for a special reason.

On the other part of the question, the distinction between the policy-determining officer and the non-policy-determining officer, that is something that we believe must be left to the Chief Executive to determine, and, as we have said in our report and have written in this bill, there will be changes in that from time to time. You may have a bureau head who is exercising functions that go

along for year after year that are certainly technical and scientific and not policy determining.

Senator O'MAHONEY. But you will have another one who does. Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes; but the same one, Senator O'Mahoney, because of a change of the work or because of some new law passed by Congress, the man who has not been policy determining in the past may become policy determining.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Let me give you an example: During this administration the Congress passed what is known as the Taylor Grazing Act and established the position of Director of Grazing Now, the duties of the Director of Grazing included the determination of policy with respect to the administration of grazing throughout the public-land States and the drafting of rules and regulations under which grazing was to be carried on. As that bill was recommended to the Congress it was proposed that the Director of Grazing should be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior without further submission to the Congress, just exactly as you propose here. That was done when the Grazing Act was first passed.

During the next session Congress amended that act and provided specifically that the Director should be confirmed by the Senate. The reason that that was done was because the members of the Public Lands Committee in both the House and the Senate felt convinced that in the public interest the Senate ought to have some part in the selection of the man who would head that Bureau. It suggests itself to me whether you do not consider there are many other bureaus of the same kind, the heads of which should not be selected without the concurrence of the Senate.

Mr. BROWNLOW. I do not know that I can clarify very much the expression of opinion that we have put in the report.

Senator O'MAHONEY. My feeling is, let me say, that you narrow the group too much when you put it down merely to under secretaries. I speak from my own experience in the Post Office Department, and I know it is very easy for an under secretary to be led around by the subordinates who know a good deal more about the business than he does when he comes in.

Mr. BROWNLOWw. With due respect to that point of view, there is another point of view about the management of the business of this great Government of ours, and that is that a secretary of a department, who is responsible for the conduct of that department, would find his assistants selected for him on a basis where they would disregard him and he would have very little control over them. Representative GIFFORD. You made use of the word "bipartisan" with respect to the seven members of the Board?

Mr. BROWNLOW. No, sir.

Representative GIFFORD. You used the word "bipartisan"?

Mr. BROWNLOW. In connection with the Civil Service Commission as established in 1883.

Representative GIFFORD. Now, these seven members, you limit them to 5 years, and they could not have been on any local, State, or national committee.

Mr. BROWNLOW. Within 5 years. They have a 7-year term. Representative GIFFORD. It appears to me, could you find anybody that had an ounce of public service in him who had not served in one of those capacities?

Mr. BROWNLOW. I think so. I think you can find them. I think you can find capable people and I think it will give confidence to the people of the country that the merit system is a merit system if members of political committees and candidates for elective office are excluded from that particular Board.

Representative VINSON. In what classification would you put, say, a district attorney?

Mr. BROWNLOW. We have ourselves not determined the question unquestionably. There are some instances in which a district attorney has policy determining features. The President, of course, would decide. I am perfectly sure that in the first years, perhaps I say perfectly sure, I feel sure-that in the first years of such system you would find them labeled "policy determining." I think with respect to their assistants you would find a different situation. I do not think the Collector of Internal Revenue is a policy determining officer.

Representative GIFFORD. Mr. Brownlow, may I suggest to you that you limit the service for 5 years, and had you not better put in there that after they were appointed they better not serve upon any local, State, or National service?

Mr. BROWNLOw. Oh, yes; if that is necessary.

Representative GIFFORD. I merely bring that out.

Mr. BROWNLOW. May I say that this morning I got a telegram from Governor Campbell, of Arizona, who said in this telegram, having served as a local and State official and Governor of Arizona and president of the United States Civil Service Commission, that he heartily approved these organizational features of our report. Of course, he had not seen the bill for the single Civil Service Administrator and this board of seven. That is important, because it comes from a man who had great experience with the present set-up of the Civil Service Commission.

Representative VINSON. When did he serve?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Under the Hoover administration.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Mr. Brownlow, I don't want to belabor this point, but my general impression is that the Tennessee Valley Authority has had a pretty comprehensive system of personnel under a merit basis. Do you know whether that has extended to important positions, comparable perhaps in some respects in relation to its work with this Civil Service Administrator?

Mr. BROWNLOW. It has.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. What has been the result, so far as you know?

Mr. BROWNLOW. I think the result of the application of the merit system to the Tennessee Valley Authority has probably been the most successful experiment we have had in this country. Because it went forward to the top and because it went down to common labor, it has been a successful experiment.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Hasn't there been a recent report issued on that subject by the Authority?

Mr. GULICK. There have been some articles.

Mr. BROWNLOW. There have been some articles; I have not seen the report.

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