Economic Tracts Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Civil-Service Examinations. The United States Government is the largest single employer of labor in this country. Its pay-rolls include 120,000 people. When i... more »t pays wages, whether it is the salary of the President of the United States or the day's wages of a laborer at the commonest work, every penny has to come out of the pockets of the people. Even if they do not pay taxes, they have to pay government expenses all the same, since they pay higher prices for rent and for all they buy because of the taxes. When Uncle Sam, therefore, pays for a day's work he ought to get the best day's work that can be had for the money. Unfortunately he has often had the worst instead of the best service, because in hiring men a great many considerations have come in with which a private employer would not have to deal. Men who have been workers in " politics " thought it proper that they should be paid for that kind of work by " getting an office," and they consequently felt it less their duty to do the real work for which the salary was really paid. It has also been the frequent custom to employ great numbers of men in the navy yards a few days before election (virtually to buy their votes), and then to turn them out into the cold a few days after the election. It was difficult to stop this because the politicians thought it to their interest to keep up the system. What is true of the national government is also true in less degree of each State in theUnion, and each city or town. They ought to get the best service at a fair rate, but they have often paid the highest prices for the poorest kind of work. " Civil-service reform " had two things to accomplish : first, to prevent the government service, the service of the whole people, from being misused for politicians or parties ; second, to ...« less