The plan of civil service reform which the President has adopted finds in the press of both parties on the whole, a favorable reception.............

....The Philadelphia "Democrat" expresses an opinion that has been uttered before by both the Anzeiger des Westens and the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, namely, that a thorough cure and structural change of our civil service presupposes quite different things than competitive examinations and advancements. The Democrat asks:

"Who examines? And in what are the candidates examined?.....How does it come that in spite of all the enormous exertions , and all the violent agitation, nothing worth while can be achieved when it comes to actual reform? Is it not like a curse lying on the country? How is it to be explained that the fetters of corruption cannot be shaken off? The cause of it all is that the nation puts almost no emphasis on education for a definite profession. A 2 general, superficial elementary education is supposed to suffice as preparation for anything. There exists, therfore, no special training for the profession of a state official. up to now it was maintained that the civil service should not become a profession. It was looked upon as political booty. That has now been recognized as an error....Officials who are not trained in their profession, who are not proficient in it, become superficial, unscrupulous, and finally the prey of fraud and corruption. They can have no respect for their profession, can find no honor in it... And with that lack all morality, all sense of honor, is finally destroyed. Let us look to Germany. What strict schooling every official there has to go through! Everybody who seeks an office must possess the highest education that can be gained. Through training and high moral and intellectual education the majority of the German officials stand far above any breath of corruption. But they also stand assured of regular advancement and of the permanency of their jobs, which cannot be taken from themby order of a minister, of of the head of the state, himself... Besides everybody who is incapacitated by sickness or old age receives a decent pension....It is thanks to these factors that officialdom in Germany stands on so high a level. Can we not get it as high in our Republic? Many 3obstacles will have to be overcome, but nothing should prevent us from taking the first step, which is the obtaining of education. Nothing should prevent us!"

What the Philadelphia Democrat here describes as a necessity is a dietetic cure of the evil, instead of a cure through patent medicines. However, as in the field of body medicine, so America is in the field of political medicine, and is still far from having recognized, that not drugs but a sensible way of living is the only thorough cure. As the sick body is to be cured through pills and electuaries, so the disease-ridden body politic shall recover through laws and regulations. This political quackery stands exactly on the same level as the benevolent, patriarchal despotism of the 18th Century. The day will come when one will realize that in America, but it has not yet dawned.