Suddenly the same Mayor addressed the late associates of the Comptroller as follows, viz.: "You will please take notice that I have elected to, and I do hereby remove you from the position of Civil Service Commissioner in and for the City of Chicago for the following causes. First: You are and have been in your performance of the duties of said office incompetent. Secondly: In the performance of said duties you have been guilty of neglect of duty." A new commission was appointed, which proceeded to reverse the rule above referred to, whereupon nearly all the employes of the city were discharged. No examinations having been held for these positions there was no eligible list from which to select their successors. Consequently, in such a case, appointments were made under a section of the statute to fill the vacancies for sixty days, during which time examinations were held to obtain an eligible list. These appointments were, of course, all made from the Mayor's party. He could not do otherwise in view of the public utterances he had made during his campaign, when he said if he retained any employes appointed under a prior administration of a different political belief, "it will only be for menagerie purposes." When the examinations were held and a list certified, it was found that in every instance the sixty day men passed at its head. Such a uniformity of results was in itself evidence of a disregard of the law. From the highest position for which examinations were held, down through all grades, to the lowest, such as barn men, the sixty day man was always marked up to the head of the list. During the years 1897 and 1898, no less than seven different persons were selected as civil service commissioners, until a board was found willing to act upon the Mayor's interpretation of the statute. One instance of the abuse of the law will suffice to show the methods resorted to, for the purpose of selecting a party man to fill a vacancy in office. An examination was held of applicants for the position of "foreman of street lamps repairs." The man who passed at the head was a sixty day man. At thirteen years of age he became a sheet metal worker's apprentice, and with the exception of a short period when he was engaged in keeping a saloon and made a failure of it, he continued to follow that occupation. He is a heeler for one of the most notorious of the aldermanic gang. It will be observed in contrasting the questions asked him, and those asked his superior, an applicant for the office of Superintendent of Street Lamp Repairs, that a lower degree of educational qualifications is required of the Superintendent, that of his subordinate, the foreman of the gang of repairers. These questions were propounded to the foreman, viz.: "If the hypothenuse of a right angle triangle is 35 feet and the base 21 feet, what is the altitude? At 30 cents a square yard what is the cost of lining with metal a cubical room 13 feet long?