626 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 568. 



academies are preparing young men for the 

 military service of the government. 



The business of the government is be- 

 coming more and more complex with every 

 passing year. The American people is 

 beginning to take a new attitude upon the 

 subject of its civil service. Formerly it 

 was thought that anybody who could read 

 and write was fit for almost any position 

 in the service of the state, and for a long 

 time in the history of the country it was 

 thought that the most practical method of 

 selecting men and women for positions in 

 the civil service was by their affiliation with 

 and devotion to political parties or political 

 factions. We are coming to a recognition 

 of a new state. The abuses of politics have 

 led the American people to the general ac- 

 ceptance of a principle, very far from be- 

 ing worked out as yet, under which men 

 and women shall be selected for the civil 

 service by a method which shall eliminate 

 the element of political affiliation (I am 

 speaking now of the administrative posi- 

 tions in the narrow sense of that term), 

 and every passing year sees some new 

 strengthening of this principle of the so- 

 called merit system under which people are 

 selected for posts in' the public service on 

 other grounds than that of party devotion. 



But we shall not be satisfied very long 

 with this condition of things. Public ad- 

 ministration is becoming with every passing 

 year a more complex subject. It calls for 

 special knowledge. It calls for the trained 

 mind and the trained hand. It will not be 

 long, therefore, until the American people 

 will, for many positions now practically 

 open, insist that the holder shall be prop- 

 erly trained and qualified to perform the 

 duties of that particular office ; and now 

 that the state offers every opportunity to 

 secure an education not merely in the ele- 

 ments of learning, but in the secondary 

 and higher grades as well; now that the 

 state offers an opportunity to procure prac- 



tically free the technical training necessary 

 to qualify people for these posts, we may 

 expect to see more and more a standard 

 of efficiency set up and insisted upon by 

 the people of this state, for all persons 

 entering the public service. In an age of 

 excellent courses in civil engineering sup- 

 ported by the state almost free of charge, 

 we may expect to see the state require that 

 the civil service aspirant in the field of 

 surveying, for example, shall be a man of 

 scientific training, not merely one who has 

 learned his business by mere rule of 

 thumb. We shall expect to see every 

 municipality demand and employ men of 

 careful scientific training to test its water 

 supply and its food supply. In other 

 words, the time of the haphazard, happy- 

 go-lucky, hit or miss public official and 

 of the ignoramus in the department of 

 public administration is passing away in 

 favor of the scientifically trained man who 

 knows his business. Now the people of 

 this state have a right to demand of the 

 state university that it shall turn out men 

 and women properly equipped for this 

 kind of work, and who will return to the 

 state in efficient service a thousandfold 

 over, the cost of their trainng. 



Now, all this you will note is in addi- 

 tion to and quite apart from the function 

 of the state university as a center for the 

 training of men and women who wish to 

 enter the learned professions, a topic which 

 has been discussed previously. To my 

 mind, if the state requires an examination 

 of proficiency from anybody as a condition 

 of practising any profession, it should it- 

 self provide the centers properly equipped, 

 where the requisite training may be ob- 

 tained. And as the state may undoubt- 

 edly increase this supervision over callings 

 now left free, we may expect to see the 

 state, in the state university, provide op- 

 portunities for study in many directions 

 which are not now to be found at all. 



