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after the completion of one full term of instruction, or the equivalent thereof, in the Foreign Service School hereinafter established.

"Those candidates for appointment as diplomatic or consular officers whose names are on the eligible list at the time the Act of May 24, 1924, becomes effective shall be eligible for appointment as Foreign Service officers."

The Foreign Service School.-It has been noted that Section 5 of the reorganization act provides "that hereafter appointments to the position of Foreign Service officer shall be made after examination and a suitable period of probation in an unclassified grade * * *”

The former practice was to admit candidates to the service by giving them a direct appointment without in all cases an opportunity of examining thoroughly into their general fitness for the service. Furthermore, it not infrequently occurred that these men were sent to their posts abroad with insufficient instruction as to the nature of their duties.

Taking advantage of the period of probation now prescribed by the statute, the President has established in the Department of State a Foreign Service School for the instruction of new appointees, covering a period of one year. The direction of the school is entrusted to a Foreign Service School Board, composed of the Undersecretary of State, an Assistant Secretary of State to be designated by the Secretary of State, the former Director of the Consular Service, now an Assistant Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Foreign Service Personnel Board, and the Chief Instructor of the Foreign Service School. A full description of this unique institution and of its mode of operation will be found in Chapter XII.

CHAPTER XI

THE RETIREMENT SYSTEM

The corner-stone of reorganization. For several important reasons the retirement system may be regarded as the corner-stone of the Foreign Service reorganization structure. To build a permanent service-a life career—with no outlet for superannuated officials would be tantamount to stagnation. In the course of a few years the higher grades would become clogged with men of advanced age, thus effectually blocking all prospect of promotion for those in the lower ranks. Indeed, strong symptoms of such a condition had already begun to manifest themselves in the old service, where the maintenance of the prevailing standard of efficiency was rapidly becoming an administrative problem. In seeking the presidential approval of the reorganization plan, Secretary of State Hughes referred to the proposal for a retirement system as follows:

"Owing to the length of time that the Diplomatic and Consular Services have been on a civil service basis, there are a number of positions, especially in the Consular Service, being held by officers advanced in years whose retention impairs the efficiency of the service as a whole. It has become urgently necessary to provide for the retirement of these officers, and in view of the fact that both branches of the service are well established on a civil service basis it appears feasible to bring them under the provisions of the civil service retirement act of May 22, 1920, modified only as to the age of retire

ment, the rate of contribution, and the rate of annuity. The immediate benefits of such an enactment would be appreciable. In fact, no proposal in connection with the improvement of the Foreign Service commends itself to my judgment with greater force." 1

1

In the interest of the service itself there were other commanding reasons why a retirement system had become necessary. No plan of adjustment could be expected to succeed which did not, in an appropriate degree, blend the welfare of the individual officer with that of his service. That the old organization was sadly deficient in this regard has been clearly shown by Secretary Hughes, whose arguments before the Committee on Foreign Affairs are convincing. He said:

"I have said that there should be provided a career as more of an inducement to the right men, who do not happen to have private means, to enter the service. But it is not enough to give them a mere living wage as they go along. Having entered this service as a career, it means that when they get through they are unfitted for anything else. They are down and out. Under no salary scale that this Government will ever give, certainly not under the one that is here suggested, will anybody lay up money. They can not do it.

"What are they going to do when they come to 65 years of age, after thirty-odd years in the service? They can not go into anything else; they are through. There ought to be some provision for retirement allowances. What is the consequence at the present time? It is a consequence which is observed not only in our service, in the Department of State, but throughout the Gov

1Letter to the President, Aug. 22, 1922, see Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, on H. R. 17 and H. R. 6357, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 24.

ernment service, and that is, we train men for other enterprises. They enter young, they are promising, they do good work, and just as they have got the experience which should reinforce their native ability and their acquisition of knowledge, they say, 'Well, what is before me?' They are picked up by private enterprise. You can not absolutely prevent that result, but you can make a man feel that he has the protection of his Government in his career if he serves the Government with fidelity, and that when he gets through with the career, in which the Government has not enabled him to save anything, in his old age the Government will give him reasonable protection." "

2

Retirement a factor of efficiency.—But it must not be imagined that the interests of the men were uppermost in the minds of those who advocated reform. Far from it, these personal interests were secondary to the main thought of building a strong Foreign Service and were only allowed to figure in the plan to a degree which would assure the desired result. Honorable Wilbur J. Carr expressed it clearly when he said to the committee:

"I hope in anything I may say here that I may not be understood as merely advocating doing something for men. The thought that lies back of anything that I may say to the committee is that what we need to concern ourselves with is the building of a service, the building of efficiency in that service, getting into the higher diplomatic posts and higher consular posts the best men we can develop and induce them to remain in the service." "

The principle of retirement on account of age has come to be recognized as an essential factor of efficiency.

"Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, on H. R. 17 and H. R. 6357, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 14, 15.

albid, p. 110.

The proof of this lies in the fact that it has been widely adopted by important corporations and business organizations which operate for profit, and has long been applied in many of the separate State governments.

Retirement systems in operation.-The following enumeration, which is necessarily incomplete, will serve to illustrate the extent to which various forms of pension, or contributory retirement systems are now being inaugurated:

States enacting legislation in relation to pensions and retirement, 1918-1920: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New York, Minnesota, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Montana, Washington, Connecticut, California, Maryland, Maine, Iowa, and Porto Rico.

Corporations paying the entire cost of pensions granted to their employees: Canadian Pacific Railway; Pennsylvania Railroad Co.; the Pennsylvania lines west of Pittsburgh; the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad; the Boston & Albany Railroad; the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad; the Illinois Central Railroad; the Southern Pacific Railroad Co.; the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad; the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad; the Midvale Steel Co.; the Cumberland Valley Railroad; the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad; the Champlain Transportation Co.; the Metropolitan Street Railway Co.; the Houston & East Texas Railroad Co.; the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Co.; the Boston Irrigation Co.; the Fourth National Bank of Philadelphia; the First National Bank of Pittsburgh; the Girard National Bank of Philadelphia; the Bank of New York National Banking Association; the Merchants National Bank of Baltimore, Md.; the Old Dominion Steamship Co.

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