appointments were made. Small experimental beginnings have crystallized into wonderful results. Hundreds of women through the liberality and enlightenment of our government are enabled to maintain themselves and those dependent on them in comfort and respectability, and each of them holds her office by the same tenure that their superiors hold theirs, so that she is equally independent and fearless, owing her allegiance not to them, but to the government which claims absolute fidelity over a solemn oath. Our public service has been much and justly criticised; it is still very far from invulnerable, but within the last two years it has made more than creditable progress in the right direction. That there have been, at various times, ignorant, careless and corrupt abuses of the appointing power can not be denied. For many years the sole power behind the throne was political influence, and thousands of appointments of both men and women have doubtless been made without reference either to the educational qualifications or moral character of the appointee. Sometimes it was a case that appealed only to the sympathies, as a needy widow, or a wounded soldier; or sometimes the unscrupulous tool of a more unscrupulous politician; not unfrequently a poor relation—all of these were made pensioners upon the treasury of the nation. Liberal pay for conscientious, intelligent labor scarcely constituted one plank in the departmental platform, but a pernicious sentiment looking toward a minimum of work and a maximum of pay exerted a wide influence. In view of the heterogeneous clerical assortment this is scarcely a matter of surprise. There are comparatively few natures so strong that they unflinchingly continue to do right simply because it is right. Even so recently as five years ago, no clerk, not even the most capable and faithful, could possess the assurance for a single day that his or her dismissal might not be demanded to make a vacancy for some one commanding stronger political influence. Inevitably, this knowledge had an injurious effect. Another circumstance: the salaries being similarly apportioned, it often chanced that a clerk doing five times the amount of work, and of infinitely better quality than his neighbor, received the same pay; and in the course of events a promotion would come to the idle and inefficient employe, while the competent and industrious one toiled on at the old salary.