LIQUOR: Great Flunk

All candidates for a civil service job are given the same test, graded impartially. But personal qualifications are also weighed, and that ushers the political equation into the civil service. On the theory that most men selected as Prohibition agents, and transferred last year from the Department of Justice’s Prohibition Bureau to the Treasury’s Alcohol Tax Unit, were Republicans, Tennessee’s wrinkle-faced old Senator Kenneth Douglas McKellar at the last session of Congress adroitly tacked a rider on the Emergency Appropriation Act. It stipulated that the 1,195 investigators and special investigators (salaries: $2,600 and $2,900) transferred to the Alcohol Tax Unit would have to stand a competitive examination with all comers for their jobs. Civil service officials loudly protested the injustice of making a civil servant take another examination to hold a post for which he had already qualified. But Senator McKellar saw no reason why deserving Democrats should not be given at least a nip & tuck chance at 1,195 desirable government jobs.

During the last two months, the field was thrown open to 8,951 candidates in 630 Federal examination rooms from Balboa Heights, C. Z., to Fort Kent, Me., from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

Seventy per cent of a candidate’s grade depended on an intelligence test, which asked definitions of words like “complex” and posed simple problems in arithmetic and algebra. Balance of the examination, however, was an observation and memory test which would have taxed the discerning powers of a Philo Vance.

A photograph of four men in what was apparently an office anteroom was handed each candidate (see cut). He was allowed to look at it for five minutes, given 30 minutes to answer 25 questions about what he had seen. Samples from the “horse sense” test:

Name at least two items indicating the season of the year.

Is the man wearing the stiff straw hat as near to the door as the man without a coat?

There is a revolver shown. From their positions in the picture, could the bareheaded man seize it more quickly than the man without a coat?

How many pictures are shown on the walls of the room?

Which man wears the darkest colored suit?

How many of the men are standing?

Are there enough chairs for the group?

What electrical fixtures are shown?

The bareheaded man (1) is practically bald (2) has dark hair carefully brushed (3) has light hair parted on the side (4) has dark hair mussed so as to cover part of his face.

The scene pictured is best described as (1) tense (2) industrious (3) agitated (4) calm (5) jubilant.

Nearly 75% of all those taking this examination failed. And of the incumbents competing for their old jobs, 856 out of the 1,195 flunked. By law they were automatically dropped from the Alcohol Tax Unit Dec. 1.

No sooner were the results announced last week than a great commotion ensued. In Washington, Secretary Morgenthau was deeply grieved to see his old hands go, talked about “chaos” within the Alcohol Tax Unit as bootleggers increased their operations for the holiday trade. Attorney General Cummings saw no legal way to pay the men until that time, for their salaries now belonged to the 856 candidates chosen to replace them. But he thought they could legitimately continue their duties without pay and hope for the best.