he United States Government, wavered between
myself and Recorder Goff; one brilliant genius, for inscrutable reasons,
placed the leadership in the New York Fire Department. Now of course
some of the men who answered these questions wrong were nevertheless
quite capable of making good policemen; but it is fair to assume that
on the average the candidate who has a rudimentary knowledge of the
government, geography, and history of his country is a little better
fitted, in point of intelligence, to be a policeman than the one who has
not.

Therefore I felt convinced, after full experience, that as regards very
large classes of public servants by far the best way to choose the men
for appointment was by means of written competitive examination. But
I absolutely split off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service
Reform friends when they advocated written competitive examinations for
promotion. In the Police Department I found these examinations a serious
handicap in the way of getting the best men promoted, and never in any
office did I find that the written competitive promotion examination did
any good. 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. The Civil Service Reform movement was one from
above downwards, and the men who