I have in mind a business organization with several thousand on its payroll. Its operations extend from ocean to ocean and its employees include geologists, chemists, engineers of every kind, purchasing agents, salesmen, superintendents of both construction and transportation, clerks, clear down to unskilled laborers. Everyone connected with the organization is made to understand that any position is open to him provided he can show greater efficiency than the incumbent. While most of the force have grown up within the organization, not all have been started at the minimum salary nor promoted because of length of service. The former is insisted upon, and the latter urged, by all friends of Civil Service. Imagine such a concern as I have described, depending upon an outside commission to examine and certify the people whom it might employ in its clerical and technical force, and being bound by its own by-laws not to employ anyone selected in any other way. No business concern could face competition and survive under such a system. Yet everyone recognizes that when applied to government affairs, Civil Service is not only the best but the only way. I am not criticising it. I am only showing the inevitable result if we change the purpose of government from the greatest liberty institution in the world to a corporation for the transaction of business. During five years that I recruited the force of the Treasury Department from names certified by the Civil Service Commission, nothing occurred to engender ill feeling. The members of the Commission and the officers of the Treasury Department understood each other perfectly and sympathized. Every member of the Commission sought as best he could—subject, of course, to the restrictions and limitations of his office—to serve the Treasury Department, and the Secretary of the Treasury, believing in Civil Service, reciprocated. There were, however, some rather plain and expressive letters exchanged. Believing that letters that actually passed between departments are the best proof of conditions as they exist, I have inserted in the Appendix the material correspondence covering four distinct cases. Some of the letters were answered by personal interviews but enough remains to show the cordial feeling that existed, as well as the nature of the contentions. It also reveals the earnestness with which the Secretary of the Treasury sought some relaxation in the rules which friends of the system, as well as the members of the Commission, insist must be rigidly enforced, and which were rigidly enforced. The last case cited relates to a request for experienced lawyers for special agents of the Treasury Department. The necessity for these will be apparent to every experienced business man.