Illinois' is that we should have a closed primary, should have registration with party affiliation and should require a man who has once voted at a given party primary to stick to that party for a very considerable period. That is what we have in Illinois. It seems to me that would obviate the objections that he finds to the direct primary as it works in his county and city. With regard to the difficulty of having fusion candidates under the present direct primary system, I do not think that is inherent in the system. I see no reason why legal provision could not be made by which fusion candidates could be had whenever it is desirable. That is a problem with which we are wrestling in Illinois now. We are cursed in Illinois with minority representation, and it is responsible for the legislative scandals which exist in our state and which have become notorious the country over. There are three legislators to be elected in each district; and any voter may vote either at the primary or at the final election, three votes for one candidate, a vote-and-a-half for two, or one vote for three. The present primary law with regard to legislative candidates permits the party committee to determine the number of party nominations that shall be put up, whether one or two or three. The Illinois Supreme Court has made recently a Delphic utterance on the subject which really does not tell us whether the provision is legal or is not legal, and we do not know how we stand. MR. WILCOX: My argument was intended to express the idea that the places where direct nominations could be tried most successfully and with the best hope of satisfactory results, was in the small urban communities. That gives the best chances of success. I believe in beginning in the way which offers the best chance of success and where you can watch the working of the plan most closely and improve it, if the mechanism needs to be improved, before you apply it on a large scale. MR. A. P. ROSE, of Geneva: I would like to say that although we have not a non-partisan primary where I am, yet practically we have proved that its theory will not work, because in my county a Republican nomination is equivalent to an election, and it is constantly the rule that the Democrats will go in and carry the Republic caucus, and they would do the same even if they could not thereafter vote in their own caucus, because it is of no consequence what they do in their own caucus, and it is very important what is done in the Republican caucus. Therefore the Democrats will, as they constantly do, vote in the Republican caucus and carry that caucus for such candidate as they wish. SAMUEL H. RANCK, of Grand Rapids: Mr. Chairman, I just want to point out one thing that I think has been overlooked, which has been raised as a criticism as to certain features of the primary, as I have Expense of the seen them in operation in three states, Pennsylvania and Maryland for certain things, and Michigan, and that is the expense connected with a primary campaign. That expense in the municipal election is keeping out, I happen to know, certain men who would make good officials, simply because they say they cannot afford the expense connected with the primary campaigns. That feature was not touched on, I believe, to-day, but I think it is something that will have to be considered in working out the solution of this thing. MR. PLEYDELL, of New York: Mr. Chairman, a word in emphasis of what Mr. Ranck has said. The direct primary for a small compact district like a township, or even some counties, can be worked cheaply. As has been said, a man can go around and canvass among his neighbors, knowing all about them. I live and vote in a small district, not in New York, and I saw a man turn a vote of 900, in a community of 3000, into a majority of 450, simply by personal effort, last week. A man can do those things where he can go around among his neighbors. As you enlarge the district you make it harder and harder for a man to get out a primary vote for himself, unless he has one of two things, either plenty of money or the newspapers, and unfortunately in some of the direct primary contests I know of, the money has bought the newspapers,— not always their influence, but the space, and the man who has had the money has had that newspaper notoriety which has been equivalent to carry the primary and is only a substitute for the political machine without the responsibility that there always is on the political machine. MR. CHILDS: I want to use a minute because I do not want to leave Mr. Allen's challenge unanswered. My work begins after his ends. Through the Bureau of Municipal Research he finds out if a public official is not doing right. That public official perhaps comes up as a candidate for re-election. If he is running for a conspicuous office and one in which the people are taking an interest, Mr. Allen's exposure will hurt him. If he is a candidate for an obscure office in which the people are taking no interest, Mr. Allen's exposure will be of no avail. There will be no excitement over any exposures he can make in the county clerk's office compared to the excitement there would be over the exposure of some conspicuous officer. What I am after is obedient government. Efficient government is incidental. If the people want efficient government they must get it by means of getting an obedient government first, and then demand efficiency. [Applause.] THE CHAIRMAN: Now, gentlemen, we will adjourn to the regular session. I see that Mr. Paine has gone, thus withdrawing his consent that we stay here. The Police Problem Luncheon. WEDNESDAY NOON, NOVEMBER 16, 1910. MR. ELLIOT H. GOODWIN, Secretary of the National Civil Service Reform League, as chairman, called the meeting to order at 1.45 p. m. and stated that the subject of discussion would be the police problem, as set forth in a pamphlet prepared for this meeting, entitled "The Organization of Police Forces," by Dr. Leonhard Felix Fuld, the author of "Police Administration" and an examiner of the Municipal Civil Service Commission of New York. [See page 281.] He reviewed the points raised by Dr. Fuld in regard to the application of civil service rules to appointments and promotions in the police force and called attention to the striking inconsistency involved in requiring candidates for entrance to submit to a very severe physical examination, but after they have once been appointed no provision is made for further physical examination, unless a man offers himself as a candidate for promotion. He stated it as his opinion that one of the main reasons for inefficiency in the enforcement of the law by the police was the multiplicity of laws, ordinances and regulations, frequently confusing and occasionally conflicting, which the individual patrolman was expected to enforce. This left it to the single policeman on the beat to decide whether or not a particular offense committed in his presence should cause an arrest and by thus lodging discretion in the performance of his duties in the patrolman the door was thrown wide open for corruption, favoritism and negelct of duty. PROF. HATTON, Cleveland, Ohio: Mr. Goodwin pointed out that one of the reasons why we do not have more effective police service in many Multiplicity of Laws of our cities, is on account of the multiplicity of laws to be enforced. I am willing to agree that it does complicate our police situation in America, that we do expect the police to attend to more things than they are expected to look after in foreign countries. I am inclined to think, however, that it is not a fundamental defect in our police work, because I believe with the proper form of police organization and police control, it is possible to secure a pretty thorough enforcement even of the great mass of law which a policeman is now called upon to enforce. I will give you this illustration. In some investigations I have made of the liquor question in cities, especially in talking it over with chiefs of police, it has frequently been said to me that the saloons could not be closed on Sunday because to do so would require the use of the entire police force, it being necessary, it was stated, to place a policeman in front of every individual saloon. I am frank to say that I do not think the Sunday closing law, in many of our cities, could be entirely enforced. However, the line of reasoning which I have suggested is wholly fallacious, because it would not be necessary to place a policeman in front of every saloon in order to close it on Sunday. If we could bring about a condition under which any man found violating the Sunday closing law would be promptly arrested and punished, you would need only one policeman for forty or fifty saloons. The difficulty of the situation is that our police forces are so organized and so controlled that it is possible through a system of petty graft, either on the part of the patrolman or, more usually, on the part of his commanding officer, to grant immunity to the saloon-keepers who wish to keep their saloons open on Sunday. In other words, there is a lack of harmony between the local sentiment in the city and the state sentiment which forces the Sunday closing law upon the statute books. Until we can work out some system whereby the state can force a local police force to put in operation fully these statutes passed by the state, we shall continue to have violations of that sort of law. It seems to me that the root of the police question is to be found in the method of controlling the police force. The solution of the problem of police control, in my opinion, is a condition precedent to any satisfactory answer to practically any of the other police problems. Sunday Law I hope that before this discussion is closed, Mr. Goodwin or someone else, will outline a little more clearly just what sort of efficiency records can be established. Dr. Fuld in his book and in his paper says, and I think very properly, that one of the necessary conditions of efficient police service is the establishment of efficiency records upon which to base recommendations for promotion. While that is true, yet that is one of the most difficult problems set for the modern police reformer, in my opinion. The question that puzzles me is how to work out an efficiency test of actual police service, because it is almost always neces sary to depend for a decision of the question of how Efficiency Tests a particular policeman has performed his duty upon the record made by some higher official. In other words, the elimination of the personal equation in making these records upon which efficiency is to be based, is the serious problem, and one that I have not yet worked out satisfactorily to myself. I know that a number of police departments and some civil service commissions are working earnestly upon that question now. Dr. Fuld, as I understand, thinks that the head of the police department should be appointed by the mayor. He makes the suggestion that he should be appointed for a long term, in his opinion for ten years, and that once having been appointed the head of a police force should not be removed except upon a statement of charges and after the right to be heard. He says further that the head of the police force ought to have the right to appeal from the original trial board to the courts. He says very plainly that this principle is not sound as to most other appointive offices; but he thinks that so far as the police commissioner is concerned, he should have a right to appeal to the courts, because the office involves so many political possibilities, and the charges urged against a police commissioner are likely to be so purely political. As to the first proposition that the police force should be under the control of one man, I take it we are all agreed. That he should be appointed for a long term, I believe every student of the police question will agree. I am in some doubt, however, as to whether the suggestion that a chief of police should be appointed for ten years is a proper one. I am rather inclined to believe that a chief of police should be appointed for an indefinite tenure and that, in the long run, it will perhaps be wiser to make him removable by the appointing power upon the simple public statement of the charges against him. I am aware that in certain cities this has resulted in removals for purely political reasons, but my observation has led me to believe that, in most of our cities where the mayor may remove the chief of police, but only upon the statement of charges, public sentiment is gradually becoming strong enough to force a mayor who might wish to remove a chief of police for purely political reasons, to leave him in his office. I may be wrong in this, but, for the present, I would be rather inclined to say that our chiefs of police should be appointed for an indefinite period and made removable by the mayor upon a public statement of charges. One word more. I do not believe we can have any effective policing in the United States until we establish a system of inspection by some power outside of the city that will standardize our police work among the cities and until there is gronted to some central authority, perhaps the governor of the state, the power to remove chiefs of police for the failure to enforce state law. MR. WILLIAM CHURCH OSBORN, New York: I am inclined very strongly to agree with Professor Hatton in his observations with reference to the length of term of the police commissioner. I at one time sat on what was known as the Committee of Nine on the police department of New York City, and I think it is no violation of confidence to say that when that committee first assembled there were two principles of police administration which took the position of being fixed facts. One of them was that the term of the commissioner of police should be a fixed term. The other was that a patrolman should not have the right of appeal to the courts. That committee sat for a period of many months and had before it all of the experts and inexperts on the police situation in the city of New York and elsewhere, and at the close of our consideration there were but two subjects on which the committee was united; first, that the term |