f the
people.

The continued intelligent execution of the civil-service law and the
increasing approval by the people of its operation are most gratifying.
The recent extension of its limitations and regulations to the employees
at free-delivery post-offices, which has been honestly and promptly
accomplished by the Commission, with the hearty cooperation of the
Postmaster-General, is an immensely important advance in the usefulness
of the system.

I am, if possible, more than ever convinced of the incalculable benefits
conferred by the civil-service law, not only in its effect upon the
public service, but also, what is even more important, in its effect in
elevating the tone of political life generally.

The course of civil-service reform in this country instructively and
interestingly illustrates how strong a hold a movement gains upon our
people which has underlying it a sentiment of justice and right and
which at the same time promises better administration of their
Government.

The law embodying this reform found its way to our statute book
more from fear of the popular sentiment existing in its favor than
from any love for the reform itself on the part of legislators, and
it has lived and grown and flourished in spite of the covert as well
as open hostility of spoilsmen and notwithstanding the querulous
impracticability of many self-constituted guardians. Beneath all
the vagaries and sublimated theories which are attracted to it there
underlies this reform a sturdy common-sense principle not only suited to
this mundane sphere, but whose application our people are more and more
recognizing to be absolutely essential to the most successful operation
of their Government, if not to its perpetuity.

It seems to me to be entirely inconsistent with the character of this
reform, as well as with its best enforcement, to oblige the Commission
to rely for clerical assistance upon clerks detailed from other
Departments. There ought not to be such a condition in any Department
that clerks hired to do work there can be spared to habitually work
at another place, and it does not accord with a sensible view of
civil-service reform that persons should be employed on the theory that
their labor is necessary in one Department when in point of fact their
services are devoted to entirely different work in another Department.

I earnestly urge that the clerks necessary to carry on the work of the
Commission be regularly put upon