Unemployment insurance should be made available also to both Federal employees and legislative employees-legislative employees especially, since their chances of obtaining reemployment are rather slim.

Retirement benefits should be granted automatically to any legislative employee who has served 5 or more years at any time on the Hill with the privilege of paying in the back money toward the annuity. The 30-year-service option at age 55 is quite preferable to most employees. The retirement of some would leave room for employment of others.

Congressman Sheridan of Pennsylvania has recently introduced H. R. 9393 which should give civil-service status to legislative employees who have served 1 year or more after a noncompetitive test. Mr. Riley on Tuesday advocated noncompetitive tests for those who served 2 or 4 years, to conform to civil-service probationary period. It would seem 1 year should be the proper time to offer this privilege to the employees. However, a question arises as to those who have served for many years, where this noncompetitive test would be a hardship owing to the number of years since these persons have left school. It would seem only fair that at the present time all persons who have at any time served 10 or more years in the legislative service should be automatically taken into Federal service, without examination, as a reward, if nothing else, for their faithful service.

Then, too, the Civil Service Commission has taken the stand that the positions on the Hill are purely clerical and will only permit CAF-2 classification-General clerical.

Secretaries and committee clerks should be designated by legislation as administrative officers (after 4 years in service) and the under clerks (after 4 years' service) as administrative assistants. Their work is far superior to that of the ordinary stenographer and typist or clerk and they should be allowed credit for their superior work and service.

It is a strange attitude for Government officials to display, to refuse an employee because of his employment in the office of a Member or Senator, a position in any of the Federal offices. It seems the employee is paying a very heavy penalty to be denied employment because of his service to Members and Senators. I might say that the person in charge of the political activity section of the Civil Service Commission acquiesces and concurs and contends that if a Federal employee's Congressman or Senator approaches a Government agency in behalf of his constituent and advised the officers that his constituent needs his position, or his dismissal would cause a hardship, that employee is invoking political influence, and should be denied employment, or let out, or dismissed, as the case may be. When one approaches a Senator particularly, this official stated, it was almost certain it was with the intention of invoking political influence.

Some provision should be made for caring for persons employed in the office of Senators and Members particularly who are not carried on the House or Senate pay rolls, so that they may receive credit for their employment and services, just the same as those who are carried on the rolls. It would seem very unfair and an injustice to deprive them of these benefits because their names to not appear on the pay rolls of the House or Senate.

It has always been the right of the citizen to approach his Member or Senator, as his representative, to obtain recognition for him before Government agencies, but not nowadays. To engage an attorney may be beyond his means. Federal employees, it would seem, are not now considered citizens of the United States. They are penalized! for endeavoring to serve their Government, denied positions because they work for Members and Senators and have done political work, yet their votes are most acceptable at election time, particularly in Presidential elections.

It is earnestly hoped by the legislative clerks that Congressman Sheridan's bill will be added as an amendment to the present bill and passed at this session of Congress, and the ban against those over 35 years of age promptly abandoned. If the President could have the matter brought to his attention, we all feel sure the age question would be settled in 24 hours.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there anyone else who desires to be heard?

If there are no other persons desiring to be heard today, the hearings will be recessed until Tuesday at 10 o'clock, when Congressman Moser desires to be heard.

(Thereupon the committee recessed at 10:55 a. m. until Tuesday, April 30, 1940.)

EXTENDING CLASSIFIED CIVIL SERVICE

TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1940

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE, Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a. m. in room 249, Senate Office Building, Senator William J. Bulow (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Bulow (chairman) and Mead.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. Congressman Moser, we will be pleased to hear you.

STATEMENT OF HON. GUY L. MOSER, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. MOSER. Mr. Chairman, I spent a little more than 22 years in the classified civil service, and I am a firm believer in civil service and the merit system. I was a country-school teacher and that gave me an opportunity to advance myself. I took my open competitive examinations and rose in rank as well as gained in experience and knowledge. I regret that at this day and age I know that I could not pass those same examinations because of the method in which they have made changes in the qualifications that they have built up over this period of time.

Some years ago I prepared, for former Congressman Jamison, of Iowa, some information that he wanted to have and use because of the experience that I had. It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I went back and delved into history and gathered the information.

The basic law of the Civil Service Act provides for open competitive examinations as the basis for the determination of merit. It also provides that noncompetitive examinations may only be held when notice of the vacancy has been given and there are no applicants.

The Civil Service Commission has become fairly bureaucratic and ever reaches out to extend its power and grasp for empire, and in the building of that philosophy they have seized on a very popular term known as "merit" and called these short cuts or methods of circumvention the extension of the merit system.

We are turning away from the open competitive examination, which is the basis of determination of merit as intended and contemplated in law, and as I knew it when I competed in open competitive examination, before I had ever heard there was such a thing as a noncompetitive examination, the basic principle of this bill, H. R. 960, which was advanced by the chairman of our committee in the House, Mr. Ramspeck. When in the Seventy-fifth Congress he submitted

H. R. 2700, the great majority of his committee was for it and it could easily have been reported out and would have had almost the unanimous backing of the committee. However, the President of the Civil Service Commission came before our committee and opposed it on the ground that experience had taught that for one civil-service examination to be held to cover a vacancy it was the Commission's experience to have an average of 14 applicants. Now, on the basis of calculation of extending the civil service to 300,000 Federal employees outside the service he made the statement that on that experience there would be an average of 4,200,000 to examine, a task that the Civil Service Commission could not handle. It was too vast, too big, and therefore the open competitive philosophy of H. R. 2700 was wrong. The committee of the House stood adamant and finally the chairman saw fit to take a trial vote one day there, and a member of the committee made the motion to make it noncompetitive, after two people had left the committee who were for the open competition, and it stood 9 to 3. We never had another hearing, never reported the bill out. So in this Seventy-sixth Congress we have H. R. 960 which conforms to the wishes expressed by the Civil Service Commission, and it conforms to the wishes expressed by some persons within the Government who, according to the chairman of our committee of the House, wanted this type of legislation.

I do not feel that I should violate any confidence, unless I am forced to, but I am firm in my conviction and strong in my belief in the principle of merit. I am so thoroughly convinced that merit can be only determined by open competition that I have been very much concerned over this H. R. 960.

When the American Forum of the Air wanted the question discussed, the philosophy of civil service and what can be done with the civil service was the question. Chairman Ramspeck and President Mitchell of the Civil Service Commission were scheduled to speak. Mr. Grannick repeatedly approached me to take the air and express my opinions. I did not want to do it, but I finally agreed to do it because he argued I was the only person he knew that advanced the theory that I held to.

Mr. Chairman, for a good many years I was engaged in law enforcement. I am a firm believer in the principle of law, I have a very profound respect for law, and I would like to call your attention to the motto on the cornice of the Supreme Court Building where we have the words "equal justice under law," but I fail to see where we are to have equal justice under law in this bill, and I am thinking of the people who took open competitive examinations to qualify themselves for the civil-service positions that they hold when I see that the doors are to be opened by this type of legislation to provide for noncompetitive examinations for those who have been selectively chosen to fill positions in the Federal service outside the classified service.

I believe that we who have had experience in Congress are all familiar with a great many of the methods adopted and used in their selection. I chafe when I pick up the newspapers and I read that the Civil Service Commission and its officers, executors, and administrators who are provided for by law come forth and state that it cannot be administered, or the law cannot be enforced if the KellerNichols amendment as passed in the House is left to stand.

I do not believe there is such a thing as "impossible" when it comes to the well-considered application of law, because I have found that in Congress laws are pretty well threshed out before they are passed. I have little patience with the argument that has been adduced, particularly by the chairman of our House Civil Service Committee. This bill was stymied in our committee, and would not have been reported out because it included the W. P. A., but when the chairman made the concession to remove the W. P. A., he got enough votes to put it out. When he reported it out, and it was passed-I cannot say what Chairman Ramspeck said to the newspapers, but I do know what the newspapers published, and he did not take any occasion to contradict it-he was then quoted as saying it was absolutely unthinkable that anyone in any of the departments of the Government in Washington whose employment was secured by a part of the relief appropriations allocated for those various services, whether it was in the General Accounting Office, the Procurement Division, or any of the other commissions, bureaus, or departments of the Government, that they should be excluded from the provisions of this bill. I know that it was absolutely the assurance and the intent of the committee in the House, when the bill was reported out, that everyone who was paid from the emergency funds, from the emergency relief rolls, was to be excluded from the provisions of this bill.

I would further say that in the years of experience I had in bringing about law enforcement that I know this law could be administered as passed.

I have little patience with the philosophy advanced by certain persons connected with the Civil Service Commission that the present overlapping and preponderance of employment on the part of persons allocated to the District of Columbia is due to the World War. Granting that the argument that they adduce as to how these people got employment in the Government service during the World War and which brought the apportionment law out of position is correct, and that there is an endeavor to bring States like my own and the Senator's from New York, Mr. Mead, up to quota, granting that that could be corrected, we are now 22 years behind that period when the war ended, and I believe that each of us who have been in Congress for any length of time have intelligence to know that people have left various sections of the country, have come to Washington, have established themselves here, have been here for years and years, and then turned their backs on the homes that they left behind them. They haven't kept up their citizenship there, they have come to Washington and established themselves, and they are the ones who are still getting preferment in their selection for the different positions in the civil service, outside of the classified service, of course.

To take them in wholesale would, under the philosophy of equal justice under law, sustain the Civil Service Commission in its untenable position to blame the World War for the lack of enforcement of the apportionment law. I feel the World War cannot be blamed for present conditions, and I believe that everybody who knows anything about the establishment of the different agencies of the Government, who has investigated and studied the emergency program as followed in 1933, the new agencies of the Commission

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