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Show SPOILS SYSTEM AGAIN IN USE William L) Foulke. former l Ivll service serv-ice commissioner, has published over his signature a severe denunciation of Postmaster General Burleson s disregard disre-gard of the spirit of the civil servico regulations In making fourth-class postmasters a part of the political spoils. Mr. FouJke says. "The pledge of th last Democratic platform that the law pertaining to the civil service should be honestly and rigidly enforced' has been openly flouted by Postmaster General Burle son. Numerous violations of the statute although called to the President's Pres-ident's personal attention have been suffered to continue without rebuke and are still going on today "The chief evil against which the civil service law was directed "as the abuse of patronage by Congressmen. It was mainly by our senators and Representative that the spalls of office of-fice were distributed to the detriment of the publk service The law provided pro-vided that administrative places should be filled as the result of optn competitiv e examinations and that the choice should be made from the three who stood highest on each list as the result of such examinations. "Now. fourth-class postmasterships had been embraced in the Classlfii d service when the present adminlstra tion came into power There are tens nf Kn,icQnHc nf thpSP nffioialri ill til'? government, and their positions are politically of Immense importance. Yet. In violation of the express provisions provi-sions of the law. Postmaster General Burleson has declared that he would consider congressional recommendations, recommenda-tions, and he even caused such a statement to be posted in all the lourth-olass postoffices in which examinations ex-aminations were to be held: nor did he limit this to the mere questions of residence or character as the law required. "If the present administration had desired to throw these fourth-class postmasterships again into the reeking reek-ing mass of political spoils it could have done this by the perfectly legal method ol withdrawing them from the classified service. That would have been not onl legal, but honest It would have been a violation of the spirit of the party platform, it would have been a trifle disreputable But how much more disereditable is it to do the same thing by indirection, by a method which hypocritically pretends pre-tends to retain these places in the classified system and yet oeiivers them irredeemably Into the hands of spoilsmen? With what consistencv can the rulerB of our Nation denounc e or prosecute offenders against other statutes when they themselves thus set the example?" |