The responsibility of departmental chiefs and their effective authority over their subordinates necessarily imply changes in the current methods of selecting these officials.  The prevailing methods are unwise and chaotic.  In some cases they are appointed by the chief executive.  In other cases they are elected.  But whether appointed or elected, they are selected chiefly for partisan service.  They hold office only for a few years.  They rarely have any particular qualification for their work.  They cannot be expected either to take very much interest in their official duties or use their powers in an efficient manner.  To give such temporary officeholders a large measure of authority over their subordinates would mean in the long run that such authority would be used chiefly for political purposes.  Administrative efficiency, consequently, can only be secured by the adoption of a method of selecting departmental chiefs which will tend to make them expert public servants rather than politicians.  They must be divorced from political associations.  They must be emancipated from political vicissitudes.  The success of their career must depend exclusively upon the excellence of their departmental work.

As long as these public servants are elected, no such result can be expected.  The practice of electing the incumbents of subordinate executive positions inevitably invites the evasion of responsibility and the selection of the candidate chiefly for partisan service.  When such a man stands for renomination or reelection, his administrative efficiency or inefficiency (unless the latter should chance to be particularly flagrant) does not affect his chances.  He is renominated in case he has served his party well, or in case no one else who wants the job has in the meantime served it better.  He is reelected in case his party happens to have kept public confidence.  Departmental chiefs can be made responsible for their work only by being subordinated to a chief executive whose duty it is to keep his eye on his subordinates and who is accountable to the people for the efficient conduct of all the administrative offices.  The former, consequently, must be selected by appointment, they must be installed in office for an indefinite period, and they must be subject to removal by the chief executive.  Those are terms upon which all private employees serve; and on no other terms will equally efficient results be obtained from public officials.

Under a democratic political system there is, of course, no way of absolutely guaranteeing that any method of administrative organization, however excellent in itself, will accomplish the desired and the desirable result.  Administrative authority must at some point always originate in an election.  The election can delegate power only for a limited period.  At the end of the limited period another executive will be chosen—­possibly a man representing a wholly different political policy.  Such a man