The reason for a written competitive entrance examination is
that it is impossible for the head of the office, or the candidate's
prospective immediate superior, himself to know the average candidate
or to test his ability. But when once in office the best way to test any
man's ability is by long experience in seeing him actually at work.
His promotion should depend upon the judgment formed of him by his
superiors.
So much for the objections to the examinations. Now for the objections
to the men who advocated the reform. As a rule these men were
high-minded and disinterested. Certain of them, men like the leaders
in the Maryland and Indiana Reform Associations, for instances,
Messrs. Bonaparte and Rose, Foulke and Swift, added common sense, broad
sympathy, and practical efficiency to their high-mindedness. But in New
York, Philadelphia, and Boston there really was a certain mental and
moral thinness among very many of the leaders in the Civil Service
Reform movement. It was this quality which made them so profoundly
antipathetic to vigorous and intensely human people of the stamp of
my friend Joe Murray--who, as I have said, always felt that my Civil
Service Reform affiliations formed the one blot on an otherwise
excellent public record.
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