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mendation of party friends was denounced as a prostitution of the appointing power. The reform demanded was the adoption of a system of educational tests of fitness to be determined by competitive examinations of self-selected candidates, by a commission appointed for that purpose; the names of those who pass the examination to be placed upon lists and the appointments to be made from names furnished by the commission. The plan included the repeal of all tenure of office acts, and the entire elimination of political influences from appointments to office or removals therefrom. The obvious result intended was to deprive the people of the right of taking any part whatever by petition or recommendation in securing the appointment of any person to office. Popularity with the people, the wishes of the people, were to count for nothing. The object of this reform was to create a privileged office-holding class, removed from the influences of popular sentiment, who were to hold their offices during good behavior.

The designs of the advocates of Civil Service reform have almost been accomplished. Such a system is inconsistent with the genius of our government and must be contrary to public sentiment. This Civil Service system will repress the laudable and honorable ambition of prominent men to serve the government in these appointive offices, and will thus manifestly tend to weaken the hold that our system of popular government has upon the minds of the people.

Citizens have just as much right to aspire through their political organizations to these appointive offices as other citizens have to aspire to the elective offices. And the people have just as much right to express their preference as to who shall be appointed to office, as they have to express their preference at the polls for a candidate who seeks election to office.

When the people elect a man to office they expect him to exercise the power of appointment in favor of men identified with his party. In fact there is an implied obligation that he will do so.

It is only through party organization and party machinery that an elector is able to give expression to his political sentiments. We elect men to make and to enforce laws who agree with us in politics. Agreement in political opinions is the great lodestone that brings men together. It is the fundamental principle of all action in our political life. Therefore, the

principle influencing the exercise of the power of appointment to office should be in complete harmony with the principle which controls electors at the polls-namely, agreement in political opinions. Any serious encroachment upon this fundamental principle does violence to our representative republican system of government. It is a dangerous innovation, and is calculated to work great harm to our system of government.

Under existing Civil Service rules no officer, however high, is to be trusted to exercise choice, discretion, or judgment in making appointments to office. The President shall not choose the people about him at the Executive Mansion. He must keep those he finds there or select others from names sent him from the Civil Service Commission. Heads of departments must keep the old force around them, or if they make changes they cannot bring in new men of their own choice, however competent. Collectors of customs and internal revenue who receive the hundreds of millions of government cash can have no choice of subordinates to aid them in transacting the immense and responsible business under their charge.

No appointing officer can select persons for particular places and send them before the Commission for examination and appoint them if they stand the educational tests. They are not permitted to examine the lists of eligibles and make selections for appointments. The Commission by an automatic process will select three names from which an appointment shall be made. Such a system is obviously inconsistent with common sense and reason and cannot bear good fruit. The Civil Service law has been in force for more than fourteen years. Have its workings changed public sentiment in regard to electing and appointing people to office? Have electors become non-partisan in casting their ballots? Have party organizations devised a scheme of selecting candidates by machinery without reference to their political opinions or affiliations? Has the press ceased to express a preference for the election and appointment of their party friends to office? Not so, the people, the party organizations, the public press, adhere to the old doctrine that the government can best be administered by their party friends. Every administration, whether Republican or Democratic, in power since the passage of the Civil Service law, has shown by its acts that it preferred its friends in office. Mr. Cleveland with an eight years'

experience in the White House has never been known to appoint a political opponent to office. These facts are conclusive proof that the people of the United States do not favor the scheme of turning the great body of official positions over to the Civil Service Commission. The people do not want a life tenure to any office; it will be far better to fix a four years' tenure to every position with the right of reappointment. It will better comport with our Republican system of government to make postmasters elective, than to place their appointment under Civil Service rules. Educational tests of fitness by Civil Service examinations should be ancillary to the appointing power, and not displace the right of choice and the exercise of judgment and discretion.

The people of this country stand nearer to the government than ever before. They have an abiding faith in our representative republican system, and it seems improbable that they will so lose interest in public affairs as to acquiesce in the rules and orders which have so extended the power and influence of the Civil Service Commission. Who shall say that the people of this country cannot be trusted with their government? A healthy and progressive public opinion has inaugurated and carried forward all the great reforms of our government in the past, and has placed this nation in the lead, and it is not be believed that the people will submit to encroachments upon their rights and privileges by these unwise and unjust rules of the Civil Service Commission. GREEN B. RAUM.

PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

IV. THE PRAIRIE STATES.

BY MICHAEL G. MULHALL, F. S. S.

THESE States are twelve in number, but only seven of them had existence in 1850, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the two Dakotas being of later date. The population is still sparse, hardly thirty-five to the square mile, although it has quintupled since 1850, viz.:

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Illinois is now the foremost State of this group, whereas in 1850 its population was less than half that of Ohio. Immigration has played a more important part in these States than in any other portion of the Union, the last census showing that nearly one-fifth of the inhabitants were foreign settlers. The figures for 1850 and 1890 compare as follows:

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In the above interval of forty years the rate of increase in the whole Union was 165 per cent. for white Americans, and 105 per cent. for colored people, from which it follows that large numbers of both came into the Prairie States, as the above excessive

rates of increase show. The population in 1890 was apparently

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It appears that only 55 per cent. of the population is of Prairie birth, the rest being made up of Americans who have "gone West" and of foreign settlers. The growth of urban population in 20 years, from 1870 to 1890, was four times as rapid as rural: the former having risen 210, the latter only 50 per cent., viz.:

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Urban and rural stand as one to three, whereas in the Middle States and New England they are as two to two. Foreign settlers are relatively most numerous in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Dakota, where they form one-third of the population, and lowest in Missouri and Indiana, being under 10 per cent. Foremost of European immigrants are the Germans, 40 per cent. of all settlers, the States preferred by them being Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Scandinavians come next, 18 per cent., and these are chiefly congregated in Minnesota. Irish stand for 11 per cent., and are found mostly in Illinois and Ohio. Canadians have settled largely in Michigan. It is a significant fact that, while the Prairie States have received a great impulse by the immigration of four million persons from Northern Europe, the Latin element is almost unknown, the total of French, Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese being only 60,000.

Agriculture.-Climate, soil, and position mark out the Prairie States as the especial home of agriculture in the New World. They produce more than two-thirds of the grain, and possess

*Including children of foreign parentage.

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