a service which has been nationalized, so to speak, such as the consular or diplomatic service, with those prevailing in the postal service, the customs service or the internal revenue service, which are still on the localized basis, to appreciate the differences between the two from an administrative standpoint.

In the consular and diplomatic services the theory is-and practise is more and more conforming to this theory-that each officer and employe is a member of a single unified service. When a person enters either of these services in a subordinate capacity he can look forward to advancement, if he merits it, anywhere within the entire service. On the other hand the government, as soon as it finds an officer or employe doing good work in a subordinate position, can secure the great advantage that will result from his transfer to a more important position. Much the same conditions obtain in the public health and marine hospital service of the Treasury Department. Under this system each employe is under a constant incentive to give his very best efforts to the performance of his work and by study to fit himself for more responsible positions. The development of an esprit de corps, efficiency and faithfulness follows almost as a matter of course.

Compare this with conditions as they exist, and as pointed out, must inevitably exist under present conditions as regards appointments in the great services-the post office, customs, internal revenue, and many others that might be mentioned-which represent so large a part of the administrative activities of the government. In these services each field station is treated almost as a local office to be managed, as far as personnel is concerned, as a detached enterprise. Its directing head in practically all cases is not only appointed from among residents of the district, but the real selection is made, not by the directing head of the service but by the local representative of the district in Congress or on the governing board of the party organization. Only in exceptional cases is a vacancy now filled by promotion from the ranks. Practically never is the head of a station who has proved his competence transferred to a more important post in the service. To make matters still worse, appointments to these positions are made for the most part for terms of but

four years. In like manner the subordinate personnel, even though they are selected through competitive civil service examinations, are for the most part taken from the district in which the station is located and they have little or no prospect of promotion except within the particular station to which they are attached. Even here they are debarred from any reasonable expectation of rising to the top as a result of faithful and conscientious discharge of their duties.

It is difficult to conceive of a scheme of organization better adapted to deprive a personnel of incentive for good work, to stifle ambition for advancement within the service, or to tie the hands of a central administration desiring to put its service upon a really efficient basis. No private enterprise would undertake to conduct its affairs upon any such basis for a moment. Not the first beginning is made toward treating the services as offering permanent careers to their personnel. No pretense is made of building up a corps of directing officers. representing a selection of the most capable. Were efficiency really sought, can there be any question that if a vacancy were to occur in such a position as that of collector of the port of New York, the administration would fill it by promoting to it some collector who has done efficient work at a less responsible post, and so on down the line? Except in respect to the subordinate personnel and then only within very narrow limits, no emphasis is laid upon efficiency in the performance of duty.

In urging the desirability of giving permanence to the higher personnel of the field services and of placing those services upon a really national basis as regards organization and personnel, I am not basing my argument merely upon theoretical considerations. Some twelve years ago it was my good fortune to be sent to Porto Rico as the treasurer of that island. Among the various duties that I had to perform in that capacity was the collection of the general property tax. For that purpose the island was divided into sixty-six districts corresponding to the sixty-six municipal districts into which for purposes of local administration the island had been divided. At the head of each district was a collector of taxes. The theory upon which this service was organized was that now obtaining in

respect to most of the field services of the national government here. Each office was a local service. There was practically no such thing as a man moving from one office to another. I changed all this. I nationalized or rather unified the service. I arranged the several districts in classes according to their importance and made a scale of remuneration for the collectors in charge running from $480 per annum in the case of the least important to $2000 in the case of the most important. There are probably eight or ten classes between these. I then established the practise of filling superior positions strictly by promotion and for merit. A man entered the service as collector at a small town with a salary of but $480 per annum. If efficient he was transferred from post to post until the higher positions were reached. The result more than justified my greatest expectations. A genuine esprit de corps was developed. The collectors knew that promotions depended upon their collecting the taxes and performing their other duties properly. The result was that when I left the treasurership some six years later, uncollected or delinquent taxes for the island as a whole were less than two per cent. I doubt whether there is any state that can show an equally good record.

Later, as secretary of the island, the task fell to me of drafting a revised police law. In Porto Rico the policing of the island is done by a single insular police force of about eight hundred men. Having in mind the success following the unifying of the tax collection service, I adopted the same principle in preparing my draft. The island was divided into sixtysix districts corresponding to the municipal districts into which, as stated, the island is divided, and a district chief was placed in charge of each. These were arranged in a hierarchy with graduated salaries precisely as was the tax collection force, and the same principle of filling positions by promotion from less important posts was adopted. Equally favorable results were obtained from this law. A man now enters the police service as a permanent career. He knows that he can be advanced from post to post as he merits such promotion. From the standpoint of the government the responsible positions are as a matter of course filled by men whose competence has been proved in lower posts.

I know that it will be urged in favor of the local system now obtaining in the United States that this system is congenial to our historical traditions and institutions; that it represents but one phase of the predilections of the American people for a local as against a national administration of public offices; that the people will never acquiesce in having as their postmaster, collector of customs or collector of internal revenue, a person brought from another state. Whatever may have been the validity of these arguments in the past, when matters of states rights and local control loomed larger than at present, I believe that all basis for them has passed away. I believe that the people are fully prepared to accept real national services, and to support a movement that will make our great national services offer a real and permanent career to all persons high and low therein employed. They are certainly asking the question why these services cannot be as efficiently and economically organized and conducted as are private enterprises. Whatever the position they may take, the people are certainly entitled to know what are the defects of the present system, why they exist and what action is required to remove them. If they acquiesce in the present system they should at least recognize the sacrifice in efficiency involved in its maintenance.

In the foregoing I have considered in detail only two of the many questions connected with the securing of an efficient government personnel. These two, however, I consider as fundamental. They are both of the same general character. They have to do with the one great end that must be obtained if a really efficient service is to be secured, that, namely, of making the government service a real career to the ambitious, one in which not only permanency of tenure during good behavior is offered, but in which the positions really worth while can be secured as the result of conscientious and intelligent work within the service. No other device can take the place of the incentive to good work that would thus be offered. Until that incentive is furnished, until the administration seeks to put the most competent man in the most responsible position, other measures will be at best but patching up a defective machine.

LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING1

THOMAS I. PARKINSON

Legislative Drafting Bureau

HE need for better drafted legislation has been presented frequently and forcibly by prominent lawyers and political scientists. The quantity and quality of our statute law, federal and state, has been the subject of vigorous criticism for many years. There exists a well-founded belief, which found frequent expression at the recent meeting of the American Bar Association, that the popular discontent arising from the tendency of our courts to declare unconstitutional or render ineffective by interpretation legislation enacted to remedy existing social and industrial evils can be traced directly to the fact that much of our so-called social legislation is hastily prepared, ill-considered, and thrown on the statute book without careful study of constitutional limitations, existing statutes, or the phraseology of the principles and rules necessary to give effect to the intentions of its proponents.

The Federal Employers' Liability Act of 1906, enacted to apply only to workmen engaged in interstate commerce, was so inaptly worded that the courts held that it included as well employes engaged in intrastate commerce, and for this reason was unconstitutional.2 In 1908 the same act was re-enacted in words which precisely limited its effect to workmen engaged in interstate commerce, and in this form it has recently been held constitutional. Senator Sutherland, in a paper before the bar association, expressed the opinion that the decision in the Ives case might have been different if the New York Workmen's Compensation Law 5 had been more carefully drafted.

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, October 26, 1912.

See Employers' Liability Cases, 207 U. S. 463.

See Second Employers' Liability Cases, 223 U. S. 1.

American Bar Association Report, 1912.

Ch. 674 Laws of 1910; declared unconstitutional in Ives v. South Buffalo Rail

way Co., 201 N. Y. 271.