Group 2 -- Debate between Senator Beck and Senator Hoar, December 13, 1882

The clause will be read as proposed to be amended.

The Acting Secretary read as follows:

First, for open, competitive examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified hereunder; which competitive examinations, as nearly as may be, shall be upon such subjects as are embraced in a good common-school education and such subjects as relate to the duties of the office for which the person examined is proposed.

Mr. BECK. I desire to ask a quest ion of the Senator from Massachusetts in regard to his common-school education, and perhaps I can make the point plainer by an illustration than by a question. This applies to the whole civil service of the United States, as I understand. Suppose a man along the stormy coast of New Jersey or Hatteras has distinguished himself as an able surfman in the management of life-boats, and has in fact saved the lives of many people, and desires promotion because of meritorious service; has he to be examined as to how much he knows in regard to matters pertaining to a common-school education? He may be a man who can neither read nor write, and yet have all the qualities, and may have, exhibited them for years, necessary to make him a proper man for promotion because of this service. But because he has not been able to go to school and go through the rudiments of a common-school education is he to be dismissed and some timid man who is a real good scholar, wholly unfit however to save a wreck, to take his place because he ran beat him in examination? I should like to know how that is.

Mr. HOAR. This amendment is offered to meet the charge which i, brought very often against this proposition, that it is a substitution of extraordinary, or recondite, or unusual learning, knowledge in Greek roots for example, instead of capacity for the duties to be discharged. The answer to the Senator's question is that in the first place I do not understand that the scheme of examination in this bill applies to any offices which can be held by persons who can not read and write, or applies to persons of the Life-Saving Service. It is merely applicable to clerical and other service in the custom-houses and post-offices and Departments. Next, if it be applicable to any office where the courage and presence of mind which would make a person valuable in the Life-Saving Service alone are required, competitive examination in the matters which relate to the office that the person is to fill would not make it improper for the appointing power to appoint such a person if it turned out that he was defective in literary accomplishments.

Mr. BECK. I suppose this would apply to all the departments of the Government, including the Life-Saving Service.

Mr. HOAR. There is where the Senator makes his mistake.

Mr. BECK. I happen to know a man who was a lieutenant, a commissioned officer in the Army, and served through the war, and served gallantly, who did all his duties well. We passed a law requiring a certain amount of education for even non-commissioned officers. He could not compete; and he was not only degraded from the rank that he, held, but he is to-day doing very common labor in the city of Washington as a private, not being able to hold even the position of a non- commissioned officer because he had not the education required by the act of Congress. I do not quite feel like degrading men who have done valuable service, because of their misfortune it may be, and I do not believe the school-master test is the test at last.

From The Congressional Record. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882. 245.