230 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
when everything is taken into consideration, that primitive 
laws have so long remained in force, and that they are even 
now with difficulty being displaced by more modern and suitable 
enactments. The movement seems to be in progress which ap¬ 
pears destined to place every fee-paid public officer on a salary 
or what is equivalent to the same. This, together with civil 
service reform, will ultimately remove the greater part of the 
political corruption connected with purely administrative 
offices. But from the very nature of American conditions, the 
movement must be slow and gradual. 
A sudden change from fees to salaries will not do away with 
all the corruption at once. When the change is made, the sal¬ 
aries are at times likely to be left so high as to become almost 
as great an incentive to corruption as when the office was paid 
by fees. * 1 Oftentimes, too, some flaw or inaccuracy in a law 
offers an opportunity for obtaining extras, of which the official 
is not slow to avail himself. All the reforms of the evils con¬ 
nected with the fee-system can be most easily accomplished through 
legislation. It is the legislator’s duty to provide laws which 
make the environment of the official such that honesty will be 
the best policy, laws which will take away the incentive to cor¬ 
ruption and make it more profitable to do right than to do wrong. 
Such laws cannot be struck off at any fixed time by the hand 
and brain of man. 
A careful study of the conditions and question involved, 
utilization of the results of legislative experiments in other 
states, and a gradual improvement of the parts wherein a law is 
found defective, are the elements required to accomplish such a 
task. 
Madison , Wis ., July, 1898. 
amendment to the New York fee code failed to pass because of the opposi¬ 
tion of sheriffs and other fee-paid officials, whose salaries would have been 
affected thereby. 
1 Many of the salaries of county officers in Pennsylvania range from $8,000 
to $15,000. 
