The civil service laws have been designed, consequently, to a very considerable extent for the purpose of protecting the subordinates against their chiefs; and that is scarcely to be conceived as a method of organizing administrative employees helpful to administrative efficiency.

The chiefs were allowed comparatively little effective authority over their subordinates, and subordinates could not be held to any effective responsibility.

A premium was placed upon ordinary routine work which observed carefully all the official forms, but which was calculated with equal care not to task its perpetrators.
The American civil service will never be really reformed by the sort of civil service laws which have hitherto been passed--no matter how faithfully those laws may be executed.

The only way in which administrative efficiency can be secured is by means of an organization which makes a departmental chief absolutely responsible for energetic work and economical administration in his office; and no such responsibility can exist as long as his subordinates are independent of him.

He need not necessarily have the power to discharge his subordinates, except with the consent of a Board of Inspectors; but he should have the power to promote them to positions of greater responsibility and income, or to degrade them to comparatively insignificant positions.