ROSA: REORGANIZED CIVIL SERVICE 557 



These additions and improvements would complete and greatly 

 strengthen the present Civil Service system. So long as the 

 Civil Service Commission does not have the staff to advise and 

 cooperate effectively with administrative officers, and to coor- 

 dinate the system as a whole, it cannot be expected that it will 

 work satisfactorily. With an utterly inadequate scale of gov- 

 ernment salaries and a rapidly changing personnel among admin- 

 istrators as well as among employees generally, it cannot be 

 expected that administration will be entirely successful or satis- 

 factory. With no adequate provision for hearing and answering 

 complaints and correcting errors or injustices complained of, 

 it cannot be expected that employees will refrain from criticism. 

 Congress and the public hear not only of many ^well-grounded 

 complaints, but also of many that have little basis in fact. What 

 we should do is not discard a practicable and well-tried system, 

 nor discredit administrators who are today confronted with an 

 impossible task, nor add burdensome restrictions and cumber- 

 some routine which would make that task more difficult; but we 

 should, after removing the legal difficulties, round out and com- 

 plete the present system, educating and helping administrative 

 officers instead of hampering them in their work, and above all, 

 refrain from burdening the Civil Service Commission with an 

 enormous mass of routine administration which it would be im- 

 possible to handle successfully. 



The responsible administrative and technical officers who con- 

 duct the various branches of the executive departments of the 

 government represent collectively more of ability, integrity and 

 lo3^alty, than they are commonly given credit for. They realize 

 more fully than those outside the government the defects and 

 inefficiency of the government service, although these are grossly 

 exaggerated in the press and on the platform. They also realize 

 better than outsiders the tremendous handicaps to efficiency which 

 are beyond their control. No private business could succeed 

 with such handicaps as well as the government does, and very 

 many do worse, as it is. If the executive departments could 

 have a fair chance for a few years, with a reorganized Civil 



