seeker. And this spirit is more and more evident in the alert and ambitious research-teachers of the younger generation.

But how can a larger prevalence of research react upon the general community? The college community is a special one. It stands aside, so aside from the business and social worlds, that it finds little favor in the eyes of either. The average American business man looks askance at the college and doubts its value; the social circles give it scarcely a thought.

Perhaps if we consider the influences society most needs, especially our American society, and ask if the motive and spirit of our individual seekers will help or mar, we shall be able to get a fair view of this aspect of our subject. Most people would agree that one of the greatest dangers confronting our society is its tendency toward luxury. It takes but a brief span of years to make plain this tendency. The twenty years I have lived in a college community bring it strikingly in evidence. It is said to be so everywhere, in the family, in society, and that we cannot expect anything else. But an association like ours is not ready to accept the pessimism, which denies any possible check. Let us conceive a fair number of our truth-seekers scattered through a community and exemplifying the qualities enumerated, most certainly the result would not be detrimental in its bearing upon this tendency. A happy indication that such a check is possible, indeed, that it exists, is the fact that so many of our millionaires give of their rapidly won wealth to education and investigation. The Carnegie Institution is a most notable example.

Another tendency in our society, so often noted that it may be wearisomely familiar to your ears, is the bent toward materialism. Material production is almost the only recognized aim in the field of education as well as the professional field. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is foolishness, is waste of time. Devotion to investigation that will bring material advantage to individual or state within reasonable time will do, but seeking for seeking's sake will not do. This, as it is frequently stated, is a natural result of the rapid material progress of a new country, where the greater weight of ability must needs go into the yet unopened avenues of industrial development. But that stage may now be regarded as nearing its normal close. Any influence, however

subtle and remote, that will hasten its decline would be a welcome one. There is a lower common sense and there is a higher common sense. The higher common sense with its "deeper meaning" will see in a wider spread devotion to investigation for its own sake a reactionary power against this deplored materialism. The lower common sense with its companion luxury, has bred decay and disintegration in powerful nations. The higher common sense preserves and vitalizes the better parts of a people's life.

I fear my treatment of the subject has not been as practical as the Association programme would demand; that the reflex effects I have brought forward have been too general and vague for the purposes of the question before us. But of statistics I have no supply, nor am I skilled in handling them. Facts we all value, but the facts of character and the inner life hold our most serious thought. We are not satisfied when we hear our national significance based upon our large fortunes, our gigantic industrial enterprises, our surpassing material progress. If our American greatness really lies in these things, the future of America is a dark one. The power, the energy and the immense application lying behind these accomplishments must be stirred with something like the spirit I have dwelt upon, if America is to be permanently a great and progressive nation. The Carnegie Instition is an outgrowth of our material greatness. The Carnegie Institution is also a promise of our larger growth.

THE RATIONALE OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Whatever corruption prevails in our political life derives its nourishment from two capital sources; the lust of gain and the lust of office. These are near kindred. But while the corruption nourished by the lust of money is unabated; the corruption nourished by the lust of office has been greatly curtailed, at least in the civil service of the Federal Government, as well as some of the states. This great gain has been accomplished by the competitive system of appointments, or by what is generally known to the public as Civil Service Reform.

Let me consider for a moment the essential character of this system To what class of reforms does it belong?

The remedies which we propose for corruption, are of three different kinds. We have,

Ist. Penal legislation.

2nd. Appeals to the moral sense of the people, or the creation of a sound public sentiment.

3rd. Devices for the removal of temptation.

Ist. Penal legislation is necessary to correct certain flagrant crimes of the graver sort, but it is rarely effectual anywhere else; there is little certainty of punishment. Penal legislation, to be effectual at all, must be sustained by the moral power of the community. Where public sentiment condones an offense, punishment is rarely possible. We see this in the failure of the laws regulating the liquor traffic. It is only the most flagrant cases of bribery, embezzlement, or fraud which we can ever hope to reach by means of punishment.

2nd. An appeal to the moral sense of the community, for the upbuilding of character, the development of civic virtue, and the creation of a healthy public sentiment is certainly the most desirable and perhaps the only final and effective remedy, but this is too often immediately unattainable. For nearly two thousand years, the Churches have been exhorting men to be good, unselfish, patriotic-to lead purer lives, to perform their duties to the State as well as to their Maker and yet to-day in spite of these appeals, crime is prevalent and the seeds of vice are still sown broadcast over the land.

3rd. To take away the incentive to corruption, to remove the jewels from the sight of those who covet them, wherever that can be done, is more effective than punishment or exhortation. It is the application to our political institutions, of the words of the Lord's Prayer "Lead us not into temptation". Where Temptation has begotten corruption, the withdrawal of temptation will lessen or perhaps eliminate it.

Any contrivance which will accomplish this, is sure to be more or less effective. Take for instance, the Australian ballot law. The evil to be remedied was twofold: Ist. The purchase of votes, and 2nd. Coercion, such as that exercised by the employers of labor over the men employed. Where the purchaser could not tell how the vote was cast for which he had paid his money, nor the employer, how the vote was cast which he sought to control, the temptation to buy or to force men to vote in any given way was largely removed, and so far as the Australian ballot is really a secret ballot, it has measurably accomplished its purpose. There are subterfuges by which it may still be evaded, the machinery is not perfect, but the principle upon which the law is founded is unquestionably sound.

Now this is the principle which underlies civil service reform, and the competitive system furnishes, in my judgment, a far more effective kind of machinery than the Australian ballot law. What is the object of this reform? The great purpose of it is not so much to provide an efficient civil service (although it does this) as to remove the temptation to use the offices of the government for personal or party ends, to remove the incentive for that kind of political corruption, which is nourished by the hope of office. To see how it does this, let us first examine the character of the evil to be eradicated; let us consider the patronage or spoils system. How did it arise? We have all seen something of its practical working, yet I think few of us understand exactly the reason for its existence. In my view it is not due to accident, but is rather a necessary outgrowth of the political conditions which preceded its birth—as much so as the feudal system of the middle ages or the balance-of-power statesmanship of modern Europe.

In a popular government, political parties are a necessity. The men who think alike will vote together, they will establish organi

zations to give effect to their collective desires; and once established, these parties will struggle hard and persistently for victory. Washington deprecated party spirit and foresaw its evils, but he could no more stay its progress than he could check the tides.

Two great parties were organized at an early day and under different names and with changing issues, they have ever since struggled with each other for mastery. The makers of our government saw this probable result, but possibly they did not clearly see all the consequences which were to flow from it, for they placed the appointment of important offices the heads of departments, foreign ministers, judges, and the like, in the hands of the President, subject to the "advice and consent" of the Senate and then provided that Congress might vest the appointment to subordinate places in the President, the heads of the departments, or the courts of law. Congress was to pass the act and then these officials were to choose subordinates at their discretion. When the Constitution was adopted and for many years afterward that proved to be an excellent plan. The civil service was then comparatively small. Parties had sprung into being but their organization was incomplete. Their control over the Executive was far less absolute than it afterward became, and during the administrations of the earlier Presidents their appointments, and still more, their removals from office were dictated mainly by public considerations and very seldom by considerations of mere party or personal expediency.

Very few changes were made when a new Administration came into power and none at all for mere party reasons. But the germ of the spoils system even then lay sleeping under the existing conditions.

Given, party government on the one hand with the hunger of partisans for power, and on the other hand discretionary appointments under the control of a President selected by party agencies, and the spoils system was sure to follow. It was certain that some President would be chosen at some time who would use his arbitrary power to reward his supporters and to strengthen the organization to which he owed his election, and when Andrew Jackson became President, that hour arrived. It would have come sooner or later if Jackson had never lived. The politics of the state of New York, already falling into corruption, had led the way in this