behind many of the governments of the Old
World in this respect. With a thoroughly established civil service
system, the effectiveness of the administration would be increased
fully fifty per cent. Under the present party system the waste is
enormous, and as the people must ultimately pay for this waste, the
burden thrown upon them is great. In the first place, the partisan
system necessarily introduces large numbers of inexperienced,
inefficient officers who must spend some years in actual practice
before they are really fitted for the positions which they occupy. In
the second place, the time spent by congressmen and other high
officials in attention to applicants for office and in urging of
appointments, prevents them from improving their best opportunity for
real service to the people.

The practice of civil service reform is being rapidly adopted in the
nations of the world which have undertaken the practice of
self-government, and in those nations where monarchy or imperialism
still prevails, persons in high authority feel more and more impelled
to appoint efficient officers to carry out the plans of administrative
government. It is likely that the time will soon come when all offices
requiring peculiar skill or especial training will be filled on the
basis of efficiency, determined by competitive examination or other
tests of ability.

Another important reform, which has already been begun in the United
States, and which, in its latest movement, originated in Australia, is
ballot reform. There has been everywhere in democratic government a
tendency for fraud to increase on election days. The manipulation of
the votes of {423} individuals through improper methods has been the
cause of fraud and a means of thwarting the will of the people. It is
well that the various states and cities have observed this and set
themselves to the task of making laws to guard properly the ballot-box
and give free, untrammelled expression to the will of the people.
Though nearly all the states in the Union have adopted some system of
balloting (based largely upon the Australian system), many of them are
far from perfection in their systems. Yet the progress in this line is
encouraging when the gains in recent years are observed.

Since the decline of the old feudal times, in which our modern tax
system had its origin, there has been a constant improvement in the
system of taxation. Yet this has been very slow and apparent