In assignment of members of the staff to grades, existing conditions were recognized as far as possible, with no immediate attempt to remedy faults that might exist therein. Statement was made that all persons who might consider themselves wrongly graded would have early opportunity to show their fitness for the grade above, either in the regular way or in some other, if it could be devised. It was stated that the qualifications that would gain the librarian’s recommendation for promotion from grade to grade (which, it will be remembered, consists merely in an increase of salary, so far as the board takes cognizance thereof) would in general be of three kinds--educational, to be ascertained by certificate or diploma, or failing these, by examination; special, to be ascertained in some cases by examination, in others by mail, in others by certified experience; and personal, to be ascertained by personal knowledge. In connection with the scheme, the training class was much extended in scope and its course broadened and made to cover an educational year. Here, as in New York, the scheme is entirely distinct from the municipal civil service, but for a different reason. In New York the library is a private institution, occupying city property and doing public work by provision of a contract which does not provide for extension of the city civil-service rules over the library force; in St. Louis, the merit system has not been introduced at all among city employees. Should it be introduced in the future, and should it be decided that the members of the library staff are strictly employees of the city, we might have here the Brooklyn experience over again, as detailed above. For purely selfish reasons, therefore, the St. Louis Public Library should be well satisfied with the _status quo_.