In moments when the electorate turned its attention to the matter it observed that the machine and its leaders practiced spoils politics on a large scale. Its workers were being cared for by means of salaries from the public treasury. Efficiency in the service of the machine was a more important qualification for office or employment than efficiency in the service of the municipality. Naturally the enemies of the extra-legal government began an agitation for civil-service acts which should take the places in the public service out of politics--that is, out of the control of the politocrats. Government employees must be appointed only from eligible lists made up by a civil-service commission after holding an examination designed to test the efficiency of applicants. Once appointed from such a list, the appointee must be protected in his position from a discharge based upon political reasons. The enemies of politocracy rallied to the support of the civil-service acts and an appeal to the popular disapproval of the extra-legal government in general secured very widely the adoption of civil-service principles. No doubt the civil-service acts were necessary and valuable legislation, but the power of the bosses did not rest fundamentally upon their ability to place their workers on the public pay-rolls any more than it had rested upon the corrupt and illegal vote. The power of the extra-legal government still was predicated upon the political ignorance of the voter. This cause not only lay undisturbed, but, with the increase in the number of elective officers, and the multiplication of local governments operating in the same territory, each with a corps of elective officers, it became more and more pronounced and widespread. Even the most intelligent man became by an artificial process politically ignorant and befogged. Local bosses became more usual, less coarse in their methods, and more able. Combinations of bosses secured more governmental power in widening areas of governmental control. CHAPTER V ALTRUISTIC EFFORTS TO ENLIGHTEN THE VOTER