Treasury Department, for the purpose of getting rid of a good deal of dead timber-of course all of this must not come in my half hour, because this is away from what I intended to say-but in that department they provided what they called an honor roll of the men whose work should come up to a certain mark, and I think that there were some 70 employees whose mark was not up to that, and they thought that they could eliminate those and could demote them and put them in positions where they could perform the duties demanded, but the influence of the Congressmen was so strong that Hon. Lyman J. Gage, the Secretary of the Treasury, had to abandon that, and he had to put them back and pay them the same old salaries. I will say that our Congress has not been entirely free from contributing to the fact of keeping barnacles under the civil service. I am in favor of leaving that with the civil service itself, investing the Civil Service Commission with power to investigate all these cases and automatically drop men not up to the standard of work.

Senator ASHURST. A great many complaints have been made during the past year by employees in the various departments against the arbitrary method of promotion, or what they claimed to be an arbitrary method. The tendency is to promote by length of service instead of efficiency. Many of the bureau chiefs, in making promotions, do not take into consideration at all the question of efficiency, but they merely regard the length of service and promote accordingly. If that is true, and that has been told to me by at least 25 employees of the Government who were complaining because they could not get promotion; it is wrong, and there ought to be some method by which they could be promoted from the standpoint of efficiency.

Mr. FOULKE. Well, that can be done. It can be provided that in the different departments there shall be competitive examinations for promotions. At the same time you are likely to promote the wrong man, I know. You may promote a man who is not so valuable as a man who does not know so much. Take the monthly efficiency record and combine that with a competitive examination and you will be apt to get the promotion of good men a great deal better than you are now. That is a question that can be remedied, and the other question, is not even difficult, for it is now possible to remove the people that ought to be removed.

Senator ASHURST. In making that statement I did not mean to insinuate that there is anybody in the Department of the Census that ought to be removed. I am just using that as an abstract illustration.

Mr. FOULKE. Now, that was the census of 1898. As I say, Robert B. Porter was a convert to the necessity of placing the Census Bureau in the classified service.

The census of 1900 suffered from the same defect. The act provided for the appointment of supervisors by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, and of statisticians and other clerical employees by the director after such examinations only as he might prescribe. The President appointed as director ex-Gov. W. P. Merriam, of Minnesota, for political reasons, and Mr. Merriam determined to make the appointments subject to the patronage of Congressmen. Senators and Representatives were asked to furnish the names of such persons as they desired to be examined for

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places in the bureau. No one else was considered for appointment. In the allotment of patronage Democrats were not entirely overlooked. They were allowed a smaller number of appointments than Republicans, and the Members of the House of Representatives did not get so many as Senators, but nobody got less than six, and regular books of account were kept, as in the preceding census, in which the appointments were charged to the Congressmen recommending them.

Gov. Merriam, however, secured a better set of employees than Mr. Porter had done. The examination was severe, and in a limited way it was competitive, because each Congressman nominated about twice as many as he was entitled to, and those who passed best were chosen, unless (as often happened) the candidates could not pass at all, in which case new persons had to be nominated.

The appointments, however, were tainted with the same essential vice as those made under Mr. Porter. It was inevitable that the appointees should use the power given to them for the benefit of their party and of the particular Congressman who have gave them the appointment. This led to abuses, of which the following case is an excellent illustration:

One of the Republican Congressmen from Maryland-I will say that his name is Mudd, not the present Mr. Mudd, but the father of the present Mr. Mudd-secured the appointment of a certain Rollins as supervisor for his district. The constitution of Maryland provides that representation in the house of delegates is to be based on the Federal Census, if no State census is taken. It was thus to the interest of Republicans to have the enumeration of the Republican counties as large as possible.

There were three counties in which it was hoped to gain delegates, St. Marys, Charles, and Anne Arundel. But the population of the first two as shown by preceding censuses was somewhat short of the 18,000 required for three members, and in Anne Arundel it was about 6,000 short of the 40,000 required for 5 members. But after the census was taken and the population of these three counties was announced, in December, 1900, it was found that each was just over the limit required, and that there would be a gain of one representative in each county. Suspicion was aroused, since elsewhere there was little growth in population, and in February the governor of Maryland called an extra session of the legislature to provide for a State census on account of the belief that there were frauds in the Federal enumeration.

Director Merriam determined to investigate. In the schedules returned by the enumerators of St. Marys County, 528 names on the last six schedules could not be accounted for. A house-to-house canvass followed and the results were developed in a trial of an indictment against William Ching, who, with certain enumerators, was charged with conspiracy in making ficticious returns.

The records in that case are still preserved and can be found in St. Marys County.

It appears that in the preceding July the enumerators had completed their schedules and their returns showed the population to be 16,998, or 1,002 less than the 18,000 limit. Ching went to Washington and complained to Rollins that the enumerators had omitted a

considerable number of inhabitants, and supplementary schedules were sent out. Four enumerators returned them with 1,138 additional names, sufficient to raise the population to over 18,000.

When these men were tried, one of them pleaded guilty and turned State's evidence. He testified that Ching told him that he ought to get from 150 to 200 additional names. He answered that he did not know where to get them. Ching replied he could go to the summer hotels and enumerate the guests, adding, "Are there no graveyards in the district?" He accordingly made up 198 additional names, partly from people who had moved away, partly from summer boarders and nurse girls at hotels, and partly from imagination, filling up the ages and occupations at will.

Of 528 additional names returned by another enumerator on his supplementary list, 73 were in Ching's handwriting, 29 had been dead from a few months to 20 years or more, 127 had never lived in the district; other names were entirely ficticious. In one case not only was a dead woman enumerated, but also the Washington undertaker who had come down to bury her.

Another enumerator returned 312 additional names, 55 being those of dead people and the rest nonresidents or fictitious. Some of the statements in his schedules were amusing. Eccleston S. Graves appeared as a school-teacher, 6 years old. Thomas J. Graves, age 2 years, was described as a farm laborer employed during the entire year, who could read, write, and speak English. Joshua Niles, 2 years old, was said to be a carpenter.

The enumeration in Charles County also contained many names which ought not to have been there, and in Anne Arundel County between three and four thousand berry pickers who were in the county temporarily a few weeks were included.

The Federal grand jury which brought in the indictment said in their report: "So long as such appointments are treated as part of the spoils of politics the recurrence of such frauds and scandals as have been revealed by our investigation may be expected."

Ching, the ringleader in this conspiracy, was convicted and punished.

Now, if these positions in the present census are treated as the spoils of politics, you may inevitably expect scandals will be repeated.

It is said that the enumerators, who are to be some 85,000 in number under the proposed bill, are so numerous and their terms of service so short that it would be undesirable and perhaps impossible to require them to go through the formalities of a civil-service examination. It must be remembered, however, that in all cases in which this may be found impracticable the President has the right under existing law to exempt these places from examination, and it must also be remembered that the civil-service examination may be as simple as necessary in any case, and that it is not even necessary for the applicants to assemble for examination at any particular place, but they may be rated on verified statements of experience. That is being done in regard to a large number of Government positions now.

Senator KING. I have heard a great many complaints which have arisen from the carrying into effect of the plan you have just sug

gested. It is stated that men have exaggerated their experience, and that they have had so many physical and other defects which an oral or a written examination would disclose that an examination given by the applicant himself and stating his own qualifications amounts to no examination at all, but is simply a tissue of lies and fraudulent representations.

Mr. FOULKE. I think that that is very greatly exaggerated. It is often the case. I will say that while I was on the commission these examinations came out, and I think that they are protected by this: The man is required to state the name of a person under whom he has worked, or rather of five persons under whom he has worked, and the names of three or four more who have worked with him, and an inquiry is made by the commission of all those persons, and from the answers to those inquiries, as well as from a personal interview, the ratings are made.

Senator KING. But that involves a tremendous amount of work. Mr. FOULKE. Nevertheless, if it is deemed essential to exempt the enumerators from examination in this act, the safeguard against improper appointments is still easy. Provide some plan for the appointment of nonpolitical supervisors, men who shall win their places by proved merit and not as a result of political favor, and then let these men recommend the enumerators and you will have a system substantially free from political spoils. Qualifications for the position of supervisor can readily be tested by civil-service methods. The Civil Service Commission has successfully examined men for positions of far greater responsibility; such places, for instance, as Indian Superintendent, Supervising Architect of the Treasury, etc., and in various municipalities positions far more important, like that of city librarian in Chicago, fire chief in New York City, have been filled by competitive methods. This bill ought to provide that supervisors of the census shall be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, in accordance with the provisions of the civil-service law. If that provision is made there, you practically will eliminate this from the spoils politics system, and will eliminate from that system this great mass of 85,000 enumerators.

We have seen how unsatisfactory was the system of appointing supervisors by the President, with the consent of the Senate. But there was still a probability that appointments thus made by our Chief Executive and open to public scrutiny and criticized by the Senate would in the main be of higher character than appointments made by subordinate political officials. In the present bill it is proposed to take away even that safeguard and to vest the appointments in the director himself, who is to recommend and appoint with the approval of the Secretary of Commerce.

Another serious trouble results from making political appointments to the positions of clerks, etc., in the Census Bureau. As soon as the main work on the decennial census is completed all these clerks and employees who are about to be discharged make an onslaught on their Congressmen or other political "influence" to secure a transfer to permanent positions in the classified service. The gentlemen of the Senate will all be subject to that pressure when this bill passes, if it does pass in its present form.

This occurred after the census of 1900, and a bill was accordingly passed making them eligible, in the discretion of the Secretary of

the Interior, to permanent appointment and transfer. If this had been done on a large scale as intended it would have utterly discredited all competitive examinations for department positions for months and perhaps years. The places would have been mainly filled by transfers, for Cabinet officers depend so much on Congress for appropriations and other legislation that they do not venture to offend Congressmen by refusing to make transfers that Congressmen request. In 1900 the President defeated the attempt to pervert this law by directing the Secretary to appoint only such census employees as were to be permanently retained by the bureau. (See 19th Report, Civil Service Commission, p. 14.)

The same effort to fill the permanent civil service by political appointments will inevitably be made if this bill in its present shape becomes a law.

The history of the census of 1910 is also enlightening.

When preparations began for that census Representative Crumpacker, of Indiana, introduced a bill providing that the force should again be selected by noncompetitive examinations and therefore subject to congressional patronage. It was further understood-in order to secure Democratic support for the measure that there was to be no discrimination between Republicans and Democrats as to the number of appointees each was to have.

On January 6, 1908, the President sent a special message to Congress urging that the census employees be selected by civil-service rules, stating that the commission was able through its regular channels to supply all needed eligibles. He declared that noncompetitive examinations served only as "a cloak to hide the nakedness of the spoils system" and were useless as checks upon patronage appointments, and that the employees of the two last censuses had been far below the average of persons appointed by competitive examinations.

Nevertheless, the bill passed both Houses by a large majority.
President Roosevelt vetoed the bill, saying:

Section 7 of the act provides in effect that appointments to the census shall be under the spoils system, for this is the real meaning of the provision that they shall be subject only to noncompetitive examination. The proviso is added that they shall be selected without regard to political party affiliations. But there is only one way to guarantee that they shall be selected without regard to politics and on merit, and that is by choosing them after competitive examination from the lists of eligibles provided by the Civil Service Commission. The present Director of the Census in his last report states the exact fact about these noncompetitive examinations when he says:

"A noncompetitive examination means that everyone of the many thousands who will pass the examination will have an equal right to appointment and that personal and political pressure must in the end, as always before, become the determining factor with regard to the great body of these temporary employments. I can not too earnestly urge that the Director of the Census be relieved from this unfortunate situation."

Both of the last censuses, the Eleventh and Twelfth Censuses, were taken under a provision of law excluding competition; that is, necessitating appointments being made under the spoils system. Every man competent to speak with authority because of his knowledge of and familiarity with the work of those censuses has stated that the result was to produce extravagance and demoralization.

Mr. Taft announced that if the bill came to him in the same shape he, too, would veto it.

The act which was finally passed, July 2, 1909, provided that the additional clerical force required should be subject to an examination