Rule of One

Day before Governor Landon accepted the Republican Presidential nomination last week (see p. 9), the White House issued an executive order designed to deflate Republican attacks on Postmaster General Farley and the New Deal's postmaster patronage. Decreed President Roosevelt: All first, second and third-class postmasters*--13,730 in all--will henceforth be subject to civil service regulations.

This shrewdly timed White House order was identical with the Administration's bill which, never a "must" measure, fell before Republican "noes" in the House last June. It provided that all postmasterships shall in future be filled by: 1) the postmaster already in office after a noncompetitive civil service examination, or 2) a postal employe with a civil service rating, likewise after a noncompetitive examination, or 3) the person making the highest mark in an open competitive examination conducted by the Civil Service Commission. To qualify, a candidate must have been a bona fide patron of the post office in question for at least one year, must be under 67 unless he is already a postal employe or a war veteran. Commented Wyoming's Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, co-author of the defeated June bill: "I feel confident that this advance ... of the merit system . . . will never be undone."

Five times under four Presidents has the status of postmasters shifted. In 1912 William Howard Taft put all fourth-class postmasters under civil service, where they have remained ever since. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson required civil service tests of all candidates, with appointment limited to the highest man. Four years later Warren G. Harding replaced this "high man'' policy with the "Rule of Three," which left the President free to choose from the top three men. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt ordered every candidate to take "an open competitive examination to test his fitness." The "examination" required him to answer a questionnaire about his business experience. Retained, however, was the old Harding Rule of Three, whereby the party in power could always put its partisans into jobs. The two major changes in the 1933 edict effected by last week's order were to make the civil service examinations actual, transform the Rule of Three into a Rule of One.

The Civil Service Commission, headed by Democrat Harry B. Mitchell, professed great enthusiasm at this latest Roosevelt reform. Cocky Republicans claimed their attacks on the President and "General" Farley were solely responsible for bringing it about. But wiseacres pointed out that the order could not possibly embarrass the Democratic machine. If reelected, Franklin Roosevelt has only to reappoint the Democrats now in office, after they satisfy the Commission that they are literate. If Governor Landon is elected, he will have either to rescind last week's order, and thus be accused of wrecking the civil service, or else carry it out, and take a drubbing from deserving Republicans who failed to place first in the Civil Service Commission examinations.

Last June Governor Landon telegraphed the Republican National Convention that the entire Post Office Department, including the Postmaster General himself, should be placed under the merit system. Informed of the President's order last week, the Republican nominee remarked: "It shows the advantages of competition. I hope now he's made such a good start, he will extend it to the WPA."

* A post office is first class if it does an annual business of $40,000 or more; second class, of $8,000 to $40,000; third class, $1,500 to $8,000; fourth class, less than $1,500.

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