UNITED STATES CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION,
_Washington, D.C., October 31, 1888_.
The PRESIDENT.
SIR: The order heretofore approved by you authorizing noncompetitive
examinations under General Rule III, section 2, clause (_e_), to
test fitness for certain designated places in the classified
departmental service, included among such places the following:
In the office of the Treasurer of the United States, seventeen clerks
employed as expert money tellers.
The attempts thus far made to make appointments to these places under
this order have fully satisfied the Commission and the Treasury
Department of the impracticability of this method of procedure, not
because of any difficulty of applying suitable tests to determine the
expertness required, but because there are really no experts to be
tested. The duties of these positions can not be learned elsewhere than
in the positions themselves, and therefore the only experts are those
now occupying them and the very few who have left them for one cause or
another, but who are not seeking to return. Therefore, since experts are
not available, and persons will have to be appointed who must learn the
duties of the positions in the actual performance of those duties, there
would seem to be no good reason why such persons should not be selected
from the eligible registers of this Commission, which are at all times
abundantly supplied with the names of persons who are both competent and
worthy. And besides, so long as these tempting places are in the
noncompetitive list, the Department will be subjected to solicitation
and pressure concerning them which it would rather avoid.
In view of these considerations it is respectfully recommended that you
approve the revocation of so much of the order above referred to as
provides for the appointment upon noncompetitive examination of
seventeen clerks in the office of the Treasurer of the United States
employed as expert money tellers.