A complete revision of the civil service system for Chicago is promised
by Elton Lower, president of the City Civil Service Commission. After
eight years' connection with the city departments the commissioner
devoted himself for over a year mainly to studying the working of the
civil service in Boston, New York, Washington and Chicago and to the
examination of the promotional methods used by railway, manufacturing
and other corporations. Securing requisite support from the city
administration, he now announces a complete reversal of the form and
revision of the rules under which the merit system has been operated in
the city.
The distinctive features of the new plan are grading by duties,
descriptive titles, defining the duties of the grades, uniformity of
compensation within each grade, advancement from grade to grade only by
competitive examination, and a greater degree of unity and independence
in the departmental administration of efficiency tests and promotional
procedure within its own bounds. Examinations in all departments and
grades are to subordinate scholastic to practical tests, and to give
greater importance to physical conditions and the investigation of
character in order to meet the requirements of service, rather than
require knowledge of facts. It is hoped to raise the standard of
efficiency and promotion by taking the tests in each department from
its own system of keeping records and accounts. As the departments
will be held individually responsible for the way they keep these, the
inevitable comparison and contrasts between them will tend to level
their standards up to the highest.
Salaries may be raised only for an entire rank and not for individuals
within the rank. Provision for grouping employes within the grades is
made on the basis of efficiency, seniority or time required by service.
The passing mark will be the only test of physical fitness. A similar
flat-grading is proposed for work requiring skill and experience.
Testing the applicant's qualifications in these respects, as is done
for New York and Boston by the trade schools, is preferred for Chicago.
A free transfer permits employes to pass from one department to another
for promotional examinations, the original entrance examination thus
giving a city employe a slight advantage over outsiders in competing
for grades. Identification tests include finger prints.
The civil service commission began to institute these features
among the employes of its own office some time ago. It first
secured proper quarters and modern sanitary facilities, and then
began training employes for its own work for which experienced
applicants were lacking. Mr. Lower maintains that if such a system is
firmly established and built up it will be likely to withstand lax
administration because "it will take as much study and thought to tear
it down as to construct it." Whatever wrong things may be introduced
into it, he thinks, "will make conditions no worse than they have been
under the system that has hitherto prevailed."
The Chicago Public Library will profit as much by the re-classification
of its force and by this scheme of promotion as any other city
administration, since its work has suffered more for the lack of
finer tests of efficiency within more specialized grades, and also
from being under the same regulations as other departments with whose
requirements its service has little or nothing in common. To have a
civil, self-regulating service system virtually its own, will free its
directors, the librarian and his staff for that initiative which will
give to this fourth largest library in the United States the leadership
which may be rightly demanded for it.