The answers returned to some of the questions gave an illuminating idea of the intelligence of those answering them.  For instance, one of our questions in a given examination was a request to name five of the New England States.  One competitor, obviously of foreign birth, answered:  “England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cork.”  His neighbor, who had probably looked over his shoulder but who had North of Ireland prejudices, made the same answer except that he substituted Belfast for Cork.  A request for a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln elicited, among other less startling pieces of information, the fact that many of the applicants thought that he was a general in the Civil War; several thought that he was President of the Confederate States; three thought he had been assassinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington Booth—­the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with which he was most familiar in connection therewith.  A request to name five of the States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included almost every State in the Union.  It happened to be at the time of the silver agitation in the West, and the Rocky Mountain States accordingly figured in a large percentage of the answers.  Some of the men thought that Chicago was on the Pacific Ocean.  Others, in answer to a query as to who was the head of the United States Government, wavered between myself and Recorder Goff; one brilliant genius, for inscrutable reasons, placed the leadership in the New York Fire Department.  Now of course some of the men who answered these questions wrong were nevertheless quite capable of making good policemen; but it is fair to assume that on the average the candidate who has a rudimentary knowledge of the government, geography, and history of his country is a little better fitted, in point of intelligence, to be a policeman than the one who has not.

Therefore I felt convinced, after full experience, that as regards very large classes of public servants by far the best way to choose the men for appointment was by means of written competitive examination.  But I absolutely split off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service Reform friends when they advocated written competitive examinations for promotion.  In the Police Department I found these examinations a serious handicap in the way of getting the best men promoted, and never in any office did I find that the written competitive promotion examination did any good.  The reason for a written competitive entrance examination is that it is impossible for the head of the office, or the candidate’s prospective immediate superior, himself to know the average candidate or to test his ability.  But when once in office the best way to test any man’s ability is by long experience in seeing him actually at work.  His promotion should depend upon the judgment formed of him by his superiors.