BUREAUCRACY: Stassen's Quiz

Monday, Aug. 31, 1953

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Ever since Confucius gave the idea to the Chinese, governments in various ways have been making their civil servants take examinations to get their jobs.* Last week Director Harold Stassen of the Foreign Operations Administration introduced a variation of this principle. He gave 1,700 employees a sweeping set of intelligence tests, to help determine which 400 should be fired.

Stassen planned the tests as an "objective indication of ability" after Congress, in cutting FOA's appropriation, had given him blanket authority to disregard civil service regulations, seniority, or even veterans' preference in pruning his staff. Clerical staff members ($3,000 a year and below) took a basic test in vocabulary and reading comprehension; higher-placed FOAers faced a more difficult exam (45 questions, 75 minutes). Bureaucrats on a policy level had a public affairs test to contend with (70 questions, 2 hours), or, if they wished, a two-hour examination in "administrative judgment."

The tests were rough, and they covered a wide area. Among the subjects for questioning: parity farm prices, the Federal Reserve system, the effect of glaciation on flora. Sample question: "Which of the following metropolitan daily newspapers would least have to add to its staff during a general election? The Denver Post, New York Herald Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune?†

To soothe the protests of C.I.O. government workers' unions, Director Stassen took three of the tests himself, in company with C. D. Jackson, White House adviser and onetime publisher of

FORTUNE. "Pretty difficult," said Stassen when he came out of the examination room. Groaned Jackson: "It was a stinker." They both passed, although FOA staffers noted bitterly that neither had a job at stake. When their marks were made public last week (other test results were kept confidential), Director Stassen had notched up a 52 out of a possible 70 in the public affairs test; Jackson had hit 49 out of 70. This gave Stassen, experts said, a rating of "excellent."

^{* The Chinese instituted a program of civil service
examinations in 165 B.C., along the lines of a proposal Confucius had
made two centuries before. As finally formalized, the system classed
aspiring civil servants into three general types: the hsiu-ts'ai, or
"budding genius," who could pass the basic district examination; the
chii-jen, or "promoted man," who passed provincewide tests, and the
chin-shih, or "achieved scholar," the man who passed an examination at
the national capital.
† Answer: the Atlanta Constitution, since the
general election is not so important as the primary in Georgia, a
predominantly Democratic state.}