In recent years our periodical literature has devoted much space to discussions of problems of efficiency. We have heard repeatedly of the demand, not for two-thousand-dollar men, but for ten, twenty, and fifty thousand dollar men, in the great industries. The efficiency engineer has sprung into being; in my own city several hundred employees of an automobile company are organized into a class, of which a professor of psychology is the leader, the purpose being the promotion of individual and corporate efficiency. The first-rate man is in demand as a buyer, a salesman, a foreman, a manager. One of the largest corporations in America pays its employees bonuses apportioned on a basis of their value as demonstrated by actual performances from month to month. The minutest economies are a matter of daily study in every manufacturing and commercial house; the hunt for the first-rate man is unceasing. Executive ability, a special genius for buying and selling, need never go unrecognized. Recently a New York bank spent months searching for a bond-seller and finally chose an obscure young man from a Western town who fell by chance under the eye of a “scout” sent out to look for talent. But this eager search for the first-rate man, so marked in commerce and industry, only rarely touches our politics. It is only in politics that the second-rate man finds the broadest field for the exercise of his talents. A President is beset by many embarrassments in the exercise of the appointing power. Our feudal system, by which senators and representatives are the custodians of post-office, district attorneyships, marshalships, and countless other positions, does not make for the recognition of the fit. While the power to appoint is vested in the executive, his choice must be approved by the senators or representatives. As the system operates, it is not really the President who appoints but the senators or representatives, and the President is expected to meet their wishes. To question their recommendations is to arouse animosity, and where the fate of important legislation hangs in the balance a President is under strong temptation to accept the recommendation of second-rate men in order to keep the members of the law-making bodies in good humor.