303 paid only once a month while in private life they received their wages every week. We ought not to believe the newspaper stories of police corruption without careful investigation and when investigation proves them to be true we should condemn the system which makes such conditions possible and not the members of the uniformed force who are its victims. No policeman can long commit official misdeeds which impair his personal integrity without the knowledge of his precinct commander and no precinct commander can follow a similar course of conduct for any appreciable length of time without the knowledge of the head of department or some official who stands close to the head of department. When the citizens of any community find that their police department is corrupt they should seek first for the conditions which cause such corruption and remedy them by appropriate legislation. Next they should remove from office the superior officers to whose negligence or fault the corrupt conditions are due and punish these men to the full extent of the criminal law. And finally some attention should be paid to the police patrolmen who may have stepped aside from the straight and narrow path. It may be necessary to punish these policemen, but the great temptation under which these men acted should be borne in mind and justice should be tempered with mercy in their case. The police problem in our American cities is the most difficult administrative problem with which American public officers have to deal. Every educated man owes it to himself as a Christian duty and a civic duty to give to the head of the police department such moral aid and assistance by means of constructive suggestions as he may be able to supply. We should not criticize unless we are able to suggest improvements; we should criticize methods rather than men; we should work with public officers and not against them; we should strive for practicability and non-partisanship in police administration. An Effective Civil Service Law in Cities. By ELLIOT H. GOODWIN, NEW YORK CITY, Merit System Secretary National Civil Service Reform League. I trust that this discussion of civil service reform in municipal government will not be considered too technical. Once a principle has received acceptance, we proceed to the means of making that principle effective in practice. I start from the point of view that the merit system has been accepted by municipal reformers, not merely as a valuable adjunct to reform along other lines, but as a basic, governmental principle upon which the successful outcome of other reforms advocated by this League is to a very large degree dependent. This point of view, which elsewhere might be attributed to a narrow and blind devotion to the cause in which I am engaged, certainly needs no argument to support it before the National Municipal League. More than ten years ago, the League's principles of municipal government were embodied in a Municipal Program, which has stood the test of time and experience in a remarkable way and has had a most important influence on municipal development in this country. One of the corner-stones of this model fabric of municipal government is the provision for the merit system in the municipal code in detail, so that the main lines of its administration and enforcement can not be altered at the passing whim of a new city legislature or the entrance into office of a new administration. Its Wide The acceptance of civil service reform as a fundamental principle in municipal government has, however, gone far beyond the boundaries of the National Municipal League. Its importance has almost invariably been recognized wherever and whenever a movement has been started to better local conditions. At the present time civil service rules in some form or other are in force in over 200 cities in the United States; and indeed this is probably an underestimate, because of the rapid progress of the movement for the commission form of government, which usually carries with it the merit principle. Other evidence of the acceptance and success in operation of the merit system lies in the fact that there are but three instances of cities that, having once adopted it, have later retreated from it. In Galveston, it was swept away by the flood and was not incorporated in the new plan for commission government; in New Orleans, the return of the ring to power in 1900 brought about partial repeal of civil service provisions inserted in the charter in 1896; in Tacoma, where it was adopted by popular vote in 1895, it was repealed the following year, but the recent institution of commission government in that city has brought it into force again. Such widespread acceptance and adoption of the principle should lead to a careful consideration of the legislation enacted and machinery instituted to bring about its practical enforcement; and it is to this point that I would direct your attention, for the purpose of having the League realize the importance to its whole program of civic development of securing proper and effective legislation and machinery where both to-day are in many instances strikingly defective. In approximately one-third of the cities in which the merit system is in force, the administration of the civil service law is subject to state control. These are the 48 cities in State Control New York State and 33 cities in Massachusetts. New York is the only state in the Union to provide in its constitution for civil service reform throughout the state and its subordinate civil divisions. The language of Article V, Section 9 of the Constitution, providing that all appointments and promotions shall be made for merit and fitness, to be ascertained, so far as practicable, by competitive examination, was broad enough to justify the establishment of a state civil service commission which should exercise jurisdiction and conduct the examinations in all municipalities, but the legislature, in its wisdom, has provided for city civil service commissions appointed by the mayor. They are, however, subject in all they do to the supervision of the state commission, which has power to remove local commissioners and appoint the successors of those removed. While the magnitude of first-class cities, New York, Buffalo and Rochester, justifies the existence of local boards closely in touch with the needs of the municipality, it is doubtful whether this is the case with second-class cities, and I fully concur in the recommendation of the New York State Commission that local commissions in third-class cities-those under fifty thousand-should be abolished and direct control should be exercised by the state commission, as is now the case in classified counties and villages. It has been proved in practice that the service in third-class cities is not large enough to justify the expense of the institution of separate machinery adequate to carrying-out the law effectively. Massachusetts, by the civil-service law enacted in 1884, places the civil service of all cities in the state under the direct control of a state civil service commission, appointed by the governor. In this way, to an even greater degree than in New York, the enforcement of the law is removed from the influence of local politics. Two other states, Colorado and New Jersey, recognize this principle of state control in their civil service laws, by providing that cities that adopt the act shall thereby come under the direct control of the state civil service commission. In Colorado, however, no cities have as yet seen fit to adopt the act, while in New Jersey the highest court has recently held unconstitutional that part of the act under which several cities adopted the jurisdiction of the state commission by action of their governing boards. In these particular cities it is expected that the citizens will at once resort to the more usual form of referendum by popular vote, and in this way New Jersey will furnish another example of state control of the administration of civil service laws in cities. The next class of civil service cities are those in which there are local civil service commissions established under general laws of the state. The best example is furnished by the four cities in Illinois, including Chicago, which have by popular vote adopted the provisions of a general act passed by the legislature in 1895. Under the Municipal Corporations Act, cities in Illinois are unusually Local 1 1 Chicago, Evanston, Springfield, Waukegan. free from state interference in local affairs, and as the law of 1895 is now in force in four cities and will apply to as many more as see fit to adopt it, it enjoys a certain stability and is not liable to change for the purpose of affecting political conditions in a particular city. Another example, which has not yet stood the test of experience, is furnished by cities in Ohio, subject to a general municipal corporations act containing mandatory civil service provisions. 2 Most of the other cities under civil service rules have obtained the benefits of the merit system by legislation, general in name but special in character, or by charter provision. The civil service in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton and Milwaukee is under laws theoretically applying to a class, but in fact applying to a particular city, or at most, to two cities. It is in cities. in which the merit system is established by special laws or by charter provision, and where no state control or state supervision exist, that the poorest results are obtained. There the civil service law is sometimes a law in name only, observed rather in breach than in performance. Enforcement or non-enforcement follow logically and directly from the attitude of the administration in power toward the civil service law. Before turning to the remedy for these conditions, however, we should have in mind the reasons which make a civil service law peculiarly difficult of enforcement. Purpose of Civil service laws have a two-fold purpose: first and foremost, to restrain appointing officers from using administrative positions as political spoils; secondly, to establish a central employment bureau, ready promptly to provide fit incumbents to fill any vacancy. An anomaly is at once apparent where the mayor is permitted to appoint the civil service commissioners, whose duty it is to restrain him and the other members of the administration in the carryingout of their political ambitions and desires. Yet this is the case in all cities in which state control of the administration of the civil service law does not exist. Again, in many cities the civil service commissioners have neither term nor tenure sufficient to 2 Pittsburgh and Scranton, the second-class cities of Pennsylvania. |