When confined to clerical positions, Civil Service is a lesser evil than anything else that has been tried, but it falls far short of being a panacea. When applied to positions requiring scientific, professional, technical or expert knowledge, it is an utter failure. If the government extends beyond its appropriate functions, and enters the business arena, Civil Service will result, first, in the greatest possible inefficiency; second, in political manipulation and control of everything, and, third, in transforming a hitherto virile and self-reliant people into a race of pap seekers. If the government pursues its present trend and enters one field of business activity after another it will logically end with everyone on the government payroll and all of us working for the rest of us and taxing ourselves to pay pensions to ourselves. When a government once enters the field of paternalism there is no place where it can logically stop. CHAPTER XXIV CIVIL SERVICE RETIREMENT Before increasing the business activities of the government and creating an enormous army of government officials, clerks and employees, all under Civil Service, it is well to consider some feasible plan of retirement, for it is a question that will not down. The discussion of Civil Service as applied to governmental industrial operations will be incomplete unless it includes the question of retirement. Shall those who have been for many years on the government payroll be pensioned? With few exceptions that is what the present Civil Service employees desire. They claim to have served their country as faithfully, and much longer, than soldiers in the army, and therefore are entitled to equal recognition and honor. Most thoughtful people are able to note some marked differences. Few who are physically fit fail when they seek admission to the army or navy, but I have known quite a number who have sought government positions in vain. In addition to this the pay of the soldier is very meagre, while that of civil service clerks, in normal times, is at least fifty per cent higher than the same grade of service commands in the business world. The question resolves itself therefore into this proposition: Shall those who have secured government positions and held them for thirty years, when there have been thirty thousand other citizens equally patriotic, and equally competent, who have sought government employment in vain, be rewarded and pensioned because of their good fortune, and at the expense of their less favored brothers and sisters?