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was not resorted to; and that the cause of this is to be found not in any unwillingness or unreadiness on the part of the Commission, but rather in an indisposition of the Secretary of the Interior to take the officers or employees concerned from such lists, or to co-operate with the Commission in holding the examinations for forming the lists.
It has also been urged that many of the offices in question require special qualifications, which would be better ascertained by the appointing power than by examination. This is a well-known plea urged by the opponents of civil service reform. How much that plea holds good is strikingly exemplified by the fact that the officers who by their misconduct helped to bring on the recent Indian outbreak in Minnesota, belonged mostly to that identical class which we are told must be excluded from the merit system because of peculiar fitness required for the performance of the duties imposed upon them, and which, we are told, can be secured only by the Department exercising an untrammelled discretion in the selection of candidates. It is hardly necessary to say that in this, as in almost all similar cases, the discretion exercised by the head of the Department is a ghastly myth, and that he exercises hardly any discretion at all, but that the appointments are simply imposed upon him by influential politicians, usually members of Congress, who seek to quarter their tools, or dependents, or favorites, upon the public purse, without much, if any, regard to their fitness for the duties to be performed.
This applies with equal pertinency to the forest rangers who have been appointed to protect the public timber lands against devastation by fire. These officers, too, required in the opinion of the Secretary of the Interior peculiar qualifications, which made it impracticable to confide their selection to the methods of the merit system, and demanded the exercise of personal discretion by the head of the Department. A searching investigation of the results will undoubtedly convince him that the “discretion” of the politicians who usually succeed in obtaining appointments for “their men” in such cases, is the last thing to be depended upon, if really conscientious and efficient persons are desired for so important a branch of the public service.
The President's order of July 27, 1897, that no removals
