(d) The present provision for the payment of a fee of $2.50 to a consul for certifying an invoice does not work satisfactorily. As the fee is the same for large and small invoices, the burden is not properly distributed according to the business done. The great mass of the business pays an amount which is proportionally very small, while the people engaged in small transactions pay amounts which are proportionally large toward the support of the consular service. There is also constant evasion by the bunching together of a great number of small invoices in order to bring them under one fee for certification. To avoid this, paragraph 16 of the bill provides that fees for the certification of invoices are to be included among those which the President is authorized by law to fix, the object being to grade the fee with some reference to the amount of the invoice. It is believed that if this can be done the consular service can be made nearly, if not quite, self-supporting. There are other defects in the present service which can be cured by Executive action, provided sufficient money is supplied by Congress. These are treated in the estimates for the various appropriation bills. The following table shows the relation between the numbers and salaries of the present consular force and the proposed classified force: Secretary Roor. The first eleven paragraphs of the bill provide for the reorganization of the system and the remaining paragraphs are aimed at specific evils in the system. There are other specific evils in the system which can be dealt with administratively. Some of the remedies will require additional appropriations, and those have been treated of in the estimates and will be presented and urged when the estimates come up for action. I suppose that will be before the Committee on Appropriations. Senator CULLOM. Yes; it will. Secretary Rooт. Such as can be treated administratively, without further or other appropriations, we will deal with as best we can in the Department. Senator BACON. Mr. Secretary, pardon me an inquiry. Under the present system a man is nominated to be consul by the President for a particular station. He is eligible only to that office, except that I suppose he could be temporarily utilized in other ways. I have forgotten exactly how elastic the system is in that particular. Sometimes be sent to relieve some one else, can he not? he can Secretary Roor. It is absolutely inelastic. The only way we can send him to relieve some one else is by depriving him of the office he holds turning out somebody else and putting him in. Senator BACON. There are some officers in the consular service who can be sent about. Senator LODGE. Consular clerks. Secretary RooT. Consular clerks. There are 13 consular clerks. Secretary Roor. Those are purely clerical offices. Senator BACON. That is a preliminary question to one that I wish to ask. As I understand from a casual glance at the first part of this bill-I have not had an opportunity to read it through the system to be inaugurated by the bill would rather make a consul the officer of a system than an officer of a particular station, would it not? Secretary ROOT. Precisely. Senator BACON. So that he could be interchanged; and it provides for promotion, etc. He would in that case be confirmed as a consul just like a captain or a lieutenant in the Army? Secretary RooT. Precisely. The scheme of reorganization which is embodied in the first 11 sections of the bill includes, first, the classification of the consular officers in grade, the assignment of the members of the present force to those grades in accordance with their present positions, the importance, the salary, and the existing conditions of their present offices, and authority to the President to transfer these graded officers from one station to another according to the interests of the service. Senator LODGE. In the same grade? Secretary RooT. In the same grade; yes. Senator BACON. And also authority for him to change the grade of an officer? Secretary Rooт. To change the grade of the place. Senator BACON. Also of the officer. He can be put into a different classification, if I understand. Senator LODGE. No. Secretary RooT. No; this does not provide for that. Senator BACON. He has to be confirmed for a certain class? Secretary ROOT. Yes; he has to be confirmed for a certain class. Senator LODGE. Then if he is moved into another class he has to be appointed and confirmed again. Senator BACON. The promotion then requires a separate confirmation? Secretary Rooт. Yes; it provides for original appointments only to the lower grades upon examination. An examination would be by a board composed of the Chief of the Consular Bureau, an officer of the State Department designated by the President, and the chief examiner of the Civil Service Commission or other person designated by the Commission-practically such examiner as they designate. Senator LODGE. The examination is not competitive. Secretary ROOT. No; the examination is to be of such persons as the President designates for examination. Senator LODGE. Like the Marine Corps to-day? Secretary RooT. Yes, and the Army; the board to accompany their report of the list of those who pass the examination with a detailed statement of the reasons for their report and of the qualifications shown by the examination. The reorganization contemplates that the appointments made to the higher grades shall be by promotion-that is to say, the original appointments to be only to the lower grade, and the appointments to the higher grades to be by promotion from the lower grade. Senator BACON. Pardon an inquiry right there, Mr. Secretary. In section 2 you speak of the number of consuls-general of the first class, then consuls-general of the second class, etc. Do I understand that there can be no original appointments to those positions? Secretary Roor. No; it is all by promotion. Senator MORGAN. Based upon examination? Secretary Roor. No the promotion is not based upon examination. The original appointment is based upon examination. The promo tion is based upon what the man does in the service. We have already started in the State Department an efficiency record, under which there will be entered, under the name of every officer in the consular service, all the information that can be now collected as to what sort of an officer he is. I have called upon the Department of Commerce and Labor to inform me what their estimate is upon the reports that are sent in by the consuls and are sent over to the Department to be published. I have called upon the Bureau of Trade Relations in the State Department for the same information, upon the Consular Bureau for the same information, and I am searching the records of the State Department to get information as to whether a man is a good man, an indifferent man, or a poor man. Then I have given directions that hereafter every specially good thing that a consul does shall be entered to his credit, and every poor thing that he does shall be entered to his discredit. Senator MORGAN. Like a military record? Secretary RooT. Yes. I am practically applying experience that I gained in the War Department in regard to the efficiency records of officers. The two things to be gained by the classification and confining the appointments to a lower grade and filling the upper ones by promotion are, first, that it will enable the President to assign the officers to stations in accordance with the interests of the service. We have now a great many square pegs in round holes and round pegs in square holes. There are men in the service whose health is suffering and whose families' health is suffering, and they are holding on because there is no way to get out except to leave the service. There are men in places for which their peculiar faculties are not fitted, but they are holding on instead of being put in places where they could do far better work, because there is no way of remedying that situation except for them to get out of the service or turn nebody else out and reappoint them. I can not see any reason why they should not be assigned as the service requires, just as an army officer is assigned. Senator MORGAN. Anywhere in the world? Secretary Rooт. Anywhere. There is one man now, a gentleman Senator Cullom spoke to me about some time ago, who is consul in China, a most excellent man. I do not believe he is going to be able to stay at the place where he is. I think considerations of health will it make it impossible. He has to go out of the service unless somebody else is turned out who perhaps ought not to be turned out, and this gentleman's name sent to the Senate upon an entirely new original appointment for another place. It is very difficult to find such a place, too, because you have either got to punish him because his health and his family's health will not stand the place where he is, by putting him in a place with a lower salary, or reward him for it, by putting him in a place with a higher salary, unless you can find one with just the same salary. There are many men who could do much better work in much better places, and we can not move them. Senator MONEY. Would not that same vice in the system obtain even if the bill is made as you have it now? In case the President could transfer there would be the same difficulty of turning somebody else out as there would be by appointment and confirmation. Secretary RooT. You could transfer somebody else. Senator MONEY. You mean you could exchange? 8 R-59-1-Vol 1- -20 Senator LODGE. The salaries are anything but uniform. Senator MONEY. This bill provides for a transfer by exchange. Secretary Rooт. Yes, sir. Senator MONEY. Then you would have to get the consent of two parties. Secretary ROOT. We would now, yes; but under the proposed system the President could make the transfer. He could order one officer to one place and another officer to another place. It would not be necessarily a direct exchange. Senator LODGE. And they would neither gain nor lose in salary. Secretary Root. No. Senator BACON. The question as to the advisability of introducing this elastic feature into the service is somewhat different from the question which arises upon this classification in the matter of promotions. Secretary ROOT. I was coming to that. That is the second advantage to be gained by classification, that it makes possible the filling of higher grades by promotion and confining the appointments to the lower grades. Now, it is not possible to have the best service from men who are hopeless of receiving any recognition of the best service. It is a fact that now it makes very little difference whether a consul does well or ill. He may be in a lower station, doing the highest kind of work, and a vacancy may occur in a better place in the very country where he is, and he expects nothing else but that somebody from home here will be shoved in over his head. He is away-out of sight, out of mind." He is doing excellent service, but there is no recognition of it whatever, and there is no way of recognizing it unless we can have some established system under which the higher places shall be filled by promotion. That would give an incentive to good work. It would make it possible to recog nize good work, and it would get us out of the rut that we are in, of having the consular service as an opportunity for retirement of gentlemen who have to be provided for because they have failed in life here. Senator MONEY. I was going to ask a question along that line. There is nothing in the present system, is there, to prevent the recog nition of a man who makes a splendid record? Why can he not be appointed, directly on your recommendation to the President, to this vacancy which occurs over him? There is no use of rushing anyone from here over there when he is on the ground and you know what he has done. You have his splendid record there before you. Secretary Rooт. Senator, it is a long-established practice, and it is a practice which it will be exceedingly difficult to change without the consent of the Senate. The Senate is a part of the appointing power. The practice of making such appointments has continued ever since I have known anything about public life. It is embedded in the procedure of our Government, and I apprehend that if the President were to undertake now alone, by himself, to make an entire change in that matter, and were to say, "I will appoint no more citizens of the various States of consequence or importance whose interests are pressed by Senators and Representatives," without first having the approval of the Senate for the change, it would be regarded as revolutionary and would create ill feeling, and it |