Before leaving the Department I recommended—and am now more convinced than ever of its wisdom—that government positions should be filled, as now, under the rules of Civil Service but that all new clerks should come facing a statute limiting the periods of their service to five years. Five years of government service, especially in the city of Washington, is in itself an education. In addition there are excellent night schools where clerks can and do pursue their studies. Before Civil Service was inaugurated thousands secured appointments in Washington, graduated in law or medicine and went forth familiar with the official atmosphere and prepared to give the lie to those in every town who teach that the Capitol of the Nation is a den of thieves. John W. Gates got his start in life as a sixty dollar per month clerk in the Post Office Department and spent his evenings writing letters for Senator John A. Logan, and meeting the big men of the nation who called. A limited period in college is of great advantage but it would ruin any boy to keep him year after year in the same classes, going over the same subjects, reciting to the same tutors, getting nothing new and all the while segregated from all practical things of life. Why give these plums of official position—and they are no less plums because secured under Civil Service—to young men and women for life when they might be passed around with great advantage to that larger body of equally deserving citizens who would be benefited by a brief experience in public service. The present force should be permitted to complete the tenor of their natural lives in the service. The new rule if adopted should apply only to those taken on after the enactment of the law limiting the period of service to five years. Exceptions would have to be made in cases requiring technical, professional or scientific knowledge. Provision would also have to be made whereby by executive order, on the recommendation of heads of departments, the specially competent could be retained. CHAPTER XXV PROPERTY BY COMMON CONSENT The desire that the government shall enlarge its functions so as to prevent large accumulations, has led to the verge of confiscation of property. Several proposed methods of partial or total confiscation are discussed. Originally no one held property by common consent, and in the very early history of the race I suppose no one gave a thought to what we now call “property rights.” Even now savages seldom claim ownership to anything beyond a dog, weapons of the chase, possibly a horse or a canoe. Gradually the divinely implanted desire for ownership, sovereignty, independence, led the more advanced to assert exclusive rights, but still they held little if anything by common consent. Each held what he could by force. Under these conditions civilization had its birth.