literary examination.  It proposes to annul personal influence and political favoritism by making appointment depend upon proved capacity.  To determine this it proposes first to test the comparative general intelligence of all applicants and their special knowledge of the particular official duties required, and then to prove the practical faculty of the most intelligent applicants by actual trial in the performance of the duties before they are appointed.  If it be still said that success in such a competition may not prove fitness, it is enough to reply that success in obtaining the favor of some kind of boss, which is the present system, presumptively proves unfitness.

Nor is it any objection to the reformed system that many efficient officers in the service could not have entered it had it been necessary to pass an examination; it is no objection, because their efficiency is a mere chance.  They were not appointed because of efficiency, but either because they were diligent politicians or because they were recommended by diligent politicians.  The chance of getting efficient men in any business is certainly not diminished by inquiry and investigation.  I have heard an officer in the army say that he could select men from the ranks for special duty much more satisfactorily than they could be selected by an examination.  Undoubtedly he could, because he knows his men, and he selects solely by his knowledge of their comparative fitness.  If this were true of the Civil Service, if every appointing officer chose the fittest person from those that he knew, there would be no need of reform.  It is because he cannot do this that the reform is necessary.

It is the same kind of objection which alleges that competition is a droll plan by which to restore the conduct of the public business to business principles and methods, since no private business selects its agents by competition.  But the managers of private business are virtually free from personal influence in selecting their subordinates, and they employ and promote and dismiss them solely for the interests of the business.  Their choice, however, is determined by an actual, although not a formal, competition.  Like the military officer, they select those whom they know by experience to be the most competent.  But if great business-houses and corporations were exposed to persistent, insolent, and overpowering interference and solicitation for place such as obstructs great public departments and officers, they too would resort to the form of competition, as they now have its substance, and they would resort to it to secure the very freedom which they now enjoy of selecting for fitness alone.