rs, how many would have been caught if its despatches had
been secretly betrayed? An important witness happened to be a
Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it has
always been a mysterious fact that the officers in search of him
could never catch him.

18. _It will be a step toward civil-service reform._ Every increase of
public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform,
because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of
it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its
favor. This has been the experience of European cities and states. A
good reason why they are ahead of us in civil-service management, is
because they are ahead of us in the public ownership of railroads,
telegraphs, telephones, etc.

In the case of the telegraph there are special reasons to expect that
government control would carry with it an extension of the civil-service
principle. In the opinion of Mr. Rosewater the postal telegraph "would
be an entering wedge for the greatest possible success of the civil
service." He says:

It would bring into the postal service a large number of skilled
operatives whose services could not be easily dispensed with. They
would be divided in politics like every other class of citizens,
their experience and trustworthiness would be of great moment, and
their trustworthiness would be increased by the knowledge that they
could not be displaced by partisan politics. This has been the
experience in Great Britain, and would be the same here. Once get
the postal service under government control and the civil-service
act, and you would soon be able to place all departments of the
government under the same system, and a large share of the public
nuisance incident to office-holding would be done away with,
leaving the officers free to inquire into and learn their duties to
their office and to the public.[10]

[10] _The Voice_, Aug. 29, 1895, pp. 1, 8.

Prof. Ely says:

One of the strongest arguments in favor of a postal telegraph, is
that such a telegraph would carry with it an improvement in our
civil service. It would increase the number of offices in which
civil-service rules would be applied, even according to existing
law, and it would be an irresistible argument in favor of the
extension and elevation of the civil s