at $6,000 a year, or whether you shall have something like 500 secretaries, perhaps, at $2,500 a year.

It strikes me that that is an artificial way of appropriating, and that it gives a rather wider latitude than you need and wider, perhaps, than, as a matter of correct legislation, you ought to have.

Mr. CARR. Well, that adjusts itself, very largely, by the manner of operating the service. You can not have more than a certain number of secretaries in the first class, because secretaries of the first class are the so-called counsellors of embassies. There can not, on the other hand, be more than a certain number in each of the other classes, because each class must bear a certain relation to the others in order to insure an adequate number from which selections may be made for promotion. The system of promotion for merit can not be operated on any other plan.

Mr. HOUGHTON. But they need not be counsellors; that is within your own discretion.

Mr. CARR. Yes; but the moment you get too many in that class you begin to destroy the morale of your service. The salaries naturally follow the experience and capability of the men, and the number of offices that you have to cover. For instance, the embassy in London scarcely ever will have more than one counsellor, and then there will be a number of second, third, and fourth class secretaries. There can not be any serious misuse of authority in this regard, because, in the first place, the salaries are fixed by Congress in the act of February 5, 1915; every change of a man from one class to another must have the consent of the Senate, which gives that body complete control over the numbers placed in each class; all of the expenditures are annually reported to Congress in the most minute detail and are, therefore, made subject to inquiry; and, finally, the maintenance of the merit system, to which the administration is pledged, requires that the higher classes should not be filled up at the expense of the lower classes.

Mr. ROGERS. Well, under your present appropriation, which is something less than $300,000, you have made your nominal staff the same-135-that you propose to continuue under the increase, have you not?

Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. ROGERS. So that the 135 secretaries, even if we give you the new appropriation, are all provided for at this moment, even though there may be some vacancies?

Mr. CARR. Yes. We have our classification here of 135 secretaries, at a total cost of $284,000.

Mr. ROGERS. And you told me the other day that there were no vacancies in either of the first two classes, but that there were five vacancies in class 3 and 23 vacancies in class 4.

Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. ROGERS. So that I think the tendency-and the very natural tendency, considering the scale of salaries now existing-is to put the men into the higher classes more rapidly than they, perhaps, deserve. Mr. CARR. NO; I can not admit that. I do not think they do go up more rapidly than they deserve. I think the marvel is that we are able to hold them going up as slowly as they do.

Mr. TEMPLE. Perhaps they get a higher classification because of the lower salaries than they would if the lower grades received higher salaries?

Mr. CARR. I do not think there is a great deal of that. Mr. ROGERS. I do not think you quite understand me, Mr. Carr. I am entirely in sympathy with a much higher scale of salaries for the secretaries; and I think the marvel is that the service is as good as it is, and not that it ought to be better. But the question is whether, in order to give a man a little higher salary, you ought to put him up to class 2, for example, more rapidly than his length of service justifies.

Mr. CARR. Not unless he has demonstrated the qualities that a man in class 2 ought to possess. I do not think it is so much a question of how much time a man in class 3 has served as it is a question of the qualities a man develops in class 3. I think as between two men we should only consider the time that the men have spent in class 3 if the capabilities of the two men are substantially equal. It is the old question of a selective system versus a seniority system; and if we do not emphasize the selective system our service is going to go to pieces. If we depend upon a seniority system of promotion in either or both branches of the service, the service is going to deteriorate. So long as men can get promotions for the length of time they have served, they are not going to put forth their best efforts, and you are not going to place a premium upon real ability and real initiative; whereas if you pursue the plan of a selective system, except where the merits are substantially equal, then you put a premium on initiative and ability.

Mr. ROGERS. I quite agree that we must have a selective system; but even in the proper application of the selective system there is some consideration to be given to the period of service of a man. Mr. CARR, Yes.

Mr. ROGERS. For example, even a Metternich or a Disraeli would not have been put in a position of counselor if he had not begun his service at the bottom; even if his abilities were known, he would have been obliged to remain a certain time in the service in order to familiarize himself with the duties of that grade.

Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. ROGERS. Now, the question is whether, in order to overcome as far as you can the salary deficiencies, which I believe we all admit, you are not putting a man up into class 2, and perhaps into class 1 also, rather faster than is customary in other services or than you would otherwise do in our own service?

Mr. CARR. No; I do not think so; not to my knowledge, at least. You will understand, of course, that I do not have anything to do with the promotion of secretaries.

Mr. ROGERS. Yes.

Mr. CARR. It does not fall under my jurisdiction. But in reference to the Consular Service, where, by the way, this same identical plan exists, the higher grades are not made use of merely for the purpose of increasing a man's salary.

Mr. ROGERS. You said there were 23 vacancies in the lowest class? Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. ROGERS. Those vacancies arose, then, not because the men in that class have been pushed up to the higher classes?

Mr. CARR. No.

Mr. ROGERS. But because you have not been able to get men for that class?

Mr. CARR. Because we have not been able to get sufficient secretaries.

Mr. ROGERS. How short are you now in the field because of the 23 vacancies in class 4?

Mr. CARR. I can not say exactly, but I know there are a number of legations that are very much handicapped by lack of secretaries. A short time ago—I do not know whether the conditions have since improved or not; but a few months ago we had scarcely a secretary in Central America and in some of the South American countries we had no secretaries.

Mr. HOUGHTON. What do you think, Mr. Carr, is the reason of your inability to bring men into class 4?

Mr. CARR. It is unquestionably due to two things. In the first place, the salary is utterly out of keeping with the work to be done and the responsibilities to be assumed and the expenses to be incurred. In the second place, there is the fundamental fact that there is not enough opportunity of promotion at the top. When a man gets up to the grade of counselor, he can not go any further, except in very few instances. And you can not attract the kind of men that you and I, I am sure, would like to see in the service, unless you give them an opportunity to go into something higher than being second man at a post at a salary of only $3,000.

Mr. HOUGHTON. Which one of those two do you think is the more weighty? You have assigned two reasons.

Mr. CARR. Of course, I think the latter.

Mr. HOUGHTON. So do I. Do you think the other has really very much to do with it?

Mr. CARR. I think it has a good deal to do with it; and I should dislike to be understood as minimizing its importance. Because it does not seem to me that we ought to favor any system which makes it impossible for a man without means, although he may have extraordinary ability, to go into a service like this and serve his Gov

ernment.

Mr. HOUGHTON. Of course, we all agree with that.

Mr. CARR. I think we ought to pay sufficient salary so that the ablest of our young men, regardless of their personal circumstances, may find it possible to get into this service and render their country good service abroad.

Mr. HOUGHTON. What age are these young men in class 4?

Mr. CARR. They are usually, I should say, from 21 to 30; around that age.

Mr. LINTHICUM. What salary do you think they ought to receive? If you raised the salary of class 4, you would naturally have to raise the salaries of the other classes also, would you not?

Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. LINTHICUM. Well, what salaries would you recommend to get the proper men into the service?

Mr. CARR. I think the scale that the department has submitted would, with a judicious use of post allowances, enable us to obtain and keep the services of the kind of men who would render the Government the best service.

Mr. HOUGHTON. Even without the process of promotion?

Mr. CARR. You can not get the highest class of men unless you give them something to aspire to beyond $3,000 and being second man at a post.

Mr. HOUGHTON. Yes; I understand.

Mr. CARR. You can improve the service very considerably, I think, by this scale of salaries. You can prevent by this scale of salaries a lot of secretaries, a lot of able secretaries, from leaving the service; and I may say that I am perfectly confident that a number of the ablest men that we have are going to leave the service in the near future-I do not mean next week, or perhaps the next six months, but in the comparatively near future unless they can have something better to look forward to. I have in mind two or three men, at least, who on the outside would command from $15,000 to $18,000 a year, who are serving to-day for $3,000 in our service; one in particular, for whom I have the highest regard, and I am sure you would also if you knew him, is a man who could go to New York any day almost and get $20,000 a year. He is a counselor to-day at $3,000. When we get to another item I am going to read to you an extract from a letter from him which sets forth his views of what he is going to be compelled to do if some means are not found to make it possible for him to live on his income.

Mr. LINTHICUM. May I ask you one question? Will you give us an outline of the duties of the secretaries in class 4? About what work do they perform?

Mr. CARR. They do various kinds of work about the office, drafting correspondence; going to the various ministries in the capital; getting information for the ambassador, or the minister; seeing visitors; making social contacts. By the way, it is through those social contacts oftentimes that the success of an ambassador or minister depends. One reason why you find in Washington, in certain of the embassies, a number of young secretaries, who are always to be found at social gatherings, dinners, and elsewhere, is that they are, you might say, the tentacles at the head of the mission in forming contacts, in gathering information, in finding out the sentiment at the Capital and among public men; and it is that very thing that enables the head of the mission to perform his most important functions for his Government.

Mr. LINTHICUM. And all of that abroad costs considerable money, but it is really borne by those men themselves, is it not?

Mr. CARR. Those young men ?

Mr. LINTHICUM. Yes; those who circulate around in social functions, and so on.

Mr. CARR. It does not cost the Government a cent. They pay it out of their own pockets and out of their own private incomes.

Mr. LINTHICUM. That is what I thought; and if an American goes there whom he is designated to show around, he takes him to the entertainments; I know that to be the case; and that expense is borne out of his own pocket.

Mr. CARR. It is borne out of his own pocket, or if he is too poor to carry it, it is paid out of the pocket of the head of the mission. Mr. CONNALLY. What is the present rate of pay of the fourth class?

Mr. CARR. $1,500 a year.

Mr. CONNALLY. Is that fixed, or is that the minimum?

Mr. CARR. That is the maximum for the fourth-class secretary; it is fixed by Congress.

Mr. TEMPLE. It is both the maximum and the minimum.

Mr. LAYTON. How long has that been true?

Mr. CARR. It was fixed by the law of 1915, if my memory serves me right. I would like just to invite your attention to one more fact there: In Washington it is a matter of general knowledge in the Government departments that you can not get even a high-grade stenographic clerk for less than $1,500; we have difficulty in keeping some of our first-class stenographic clerks in the State Department at $1,800. They have absolutely no social obligations whatsoever; they do not mingle in the set in which the secretaries and members of the legations mingle. They have none of the expenses which secretaries have; and yet we expect to get young men to go abroad and serve in our embassies as the right-hand assistants of heads of the embassies, and to get those young men for $1,500 a year; and we expect them to go to social functions and official functions of all kinds, and mingle on terms of equality with the people who attend those functions, to dress well, to belong to clubs, because that is necessary to the discharge of their duties, and to do many other things which require expenditure of money. And the only reason that we get anybody to go is the fact that we have a number of young men in this country-it is shown here that the number is not sufficiently large who are willing, from their interest in the social position and the other things which are attractive to them, to spend their own money in living abroad and in entertaining, for the personal satisfaction which they derive from the official and social relations, and the acquaintances which they acquire, and the service they render to the Government. There are a few men who go for other motives. Most of them are swayed, I think, very largely by those factors, which are of personal interest to them. Now, that kind of a man can not be utilized to the same advantage, or anywhere near the same advantage, as the man who is paid a proper wage, who is under the entire jurisdiction of the Secretary of State, and who has an interest in holding his post in the service.

Mr. DICKINSON. What are the salaries of the other secretaries? Give the classes and the salary of each.

Mr. CARR. The first class is $3,000; the second class is $2,625; the third class is $2,000, and the fourth class is $1,500.

Mr. DICKINSON. I notice in the bill reported last year, a copy of which I have before me, that the first secretary got $3,500, the second secretary $3,125, the third secretary got $2,500, and the fourth secretary $2,000. Was that changed on the floor?

Mr. ROGERS. Yes; it went back to the old scale. Any increase that we make is subject to a point of order, of course. Mr. DICKINSON. Certainly.

Mr. ROGERS. And that point of order was made.

Mr. MOORES. Does not the Government run the risk all the time of having ill-paid secretaries of legations either in the pay of yellow newspapers or of foreign governments for the sake of information they can get?

Mr. CARR. Well, I suppose you might say there is a risk there, although I know of no case where that has been found true.

Mr. MOORES. I remember one case where a civil-service clerk, a stenographer attached to a legation, was in the pay of a New York newspaper; I never knew of a case involving a secretary; but the secretaries are certainly subject to that temptation.