Among other things, the scope of the examinations prescribed for those who seek to enter the classified service has been better defined and made more practical, the number of names to be certified from the eligible lists to the appointing officers from which a selection is made has been reduced from four to three, the maximum limitation of the age of persons seeking entrance to the classified service to 45 years has been changed, and reasonable provision has been made for the transfer of employees from one Department to another in proper cases. A plan has also been devised providing for the examination of applicants for promotion in the service, which, when in full operation, will eliminate all chance of favoritism in the advancement of employees, by making promotion a reward of merit and faithful discharge of duty.
Until within a few weeks there was no uniform classification of employees in the different Executive Departments of the Government. As a result of this condition, in some of the Departments positions could be obtained without civil-service examination, because they were not within the classification of such Department, while in other Departments an examination and certification were necessary to obtain positions of the same grade, because such positions were embraced in the classifications applicable to those Departments.
The exception of laborers, watchmen, and messengers from examination and classification gave opportunity, in the absence of any rule guarding against it, for the employment, free from civil-service restrictions, of persons under these designations, who were immediately detailed to do clerical work.
All this has been obviated by the application to all the Departments of an extended and uniform classification embracing grades of employees not theretofore included, and by the adoption of a rule prohibiting the detail of laborers, watchmen, or messengers to clerical duty.
The path of civil-service reform has not at all times been pleasant nor easy. The scope and purpose of the reform have been much misapprehended; and this has not only given rise to strong opposition, but has led to its invocation by its friends to compass objects not in the least related to it. Thus partisans of the patronage system have naturally condemned it. Those who do not understand its meaning either mistrust it or, when disappointed because in its present stage it is not applied to every real or imaginary ill, accuse those charged with its enforcement with faithlessness to civil-service reform. Its importance has frequently been underestimated, and the support of good men has thus been lost by their lack of interest in its success. Besides all these difficulties, those responsible for the administration of the Government in its executive branches have been and still are often annoyed and irritated by the disloyalty to the service and the insolence of employees who remain in place as the beneficiaries and the relics and reminders of the vicious system of appointment which civil-service reform was intended to displace.
And yet these are but the incidents of an advance movement which is radical and far-reaching. The people are, notwithstanding, to be congratulated upon the progress which has been made and upon the firm, practical, and sensible foundation upon which this reform now rests.
With a continuation of the intelligent fidelity which has hitherto characterized the work of the Commission; with a continuation and increase of the favor and liberality which have lately been evinced by the Congress in the proper equipment of the Commission for its work; with a firm but conservative and reasonable support of the reform by all its friends, and with the disappearance of opposition which must inevitably follow its better understanding, the execution of the civil-service law can not fail to ultimately answer the hopes in which it had its origin.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 26, 1888.
To the Senate of the United States: