all of whose members were still carrying on their regular work, made their reports during the last half of 1906.  The Committee informed itself fully regarding the business methods of practically every individual branch of the business of the Government, and effected a marked improvement in general efficiency throughout the service.  The conduct of the routine business of the Government had never been thoroughly overhauled before, and this examination of it resulted in the promulgation of a set of working principles for the transaction of public business which are as sound to-day as they were when the Committee finished its work.  The somewhat elaborate and costly investigations of Government business methods since made have served merely to confirm the findings of the Committee on Departmental Methods, which were achieved without costing the Government a dollar.  The actual saving in the conduct of the business of the Government through the better methods thus introduced amounted yearly to many hundreds of thousands of dollars; but a far more important gain was due to the remarkable success of the Commission in establishing a new point of view in public servants toward their work.

The need for improvement in the Governmental methods of transacting business may be illustrated by an actual case.  An officer in charge of an Indian agency made a requisition in the autumn for a stove costing seven dollars, certifying at the same time that it was needed to keep the infirmary warm during the winter, because the old stove was worn out.  Thereupon the customary papers went through the customary routine, without unusual delay at any point.  The transaction moved like a glacier with dignity to its appointed end, and the stove reached the infirmary in good order in time for the Indian agent to acknowledge its arrival in these words:  “The stove is here.  So is spring.”

The Civil Service Commission, under men like John McIlhenny and Garfield, rendered service without which the Government could have been conducted with neither efficiency nor honesty.  The politicians were not the only persons at fault; almost as much improper pressure for appointments is due to mere misplaced sympathy, and to the spiritless inefficiency which seeks a Government office as a haven for the incompetent.  An amusing feature of office seeking is that each man desiring an office is apt to look down on all others with the same object as forming an objectionable class with which he has nothing in common.  At the time of the eruption of Mt.  Pelee, when among others the American Consul was killed, a man who had long been seeking an appointment promptly applied for the vacancy.  He was a good man, of persistent nature, who felt I had been somewhat blind to his merits.  The morning after the catastrophe he wrote, saying that as the consul was dead he would like his place, and that I could surely give it to him, because “even the office seekers could not have applied for it yet!”