A PERSONNEL PROGRAM FOR THE FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE.

By Herman Feldman. United States Government Printing Office, 1931. 287 pp.

Professor Feldman's report is an analysis and appraisal of how Uncle Sam administers the problem of dealing with the huge staff of employees (now about 600,000) and an attempt to indicate how, in the light of modern personnel management, this administration may be brought to its highest levels. The material was gathered almost entirely from original sources in 1928-1929, when Professor Feldman was acting as a nongovernmental advisor of the field division of the United States Personnel Classification Board. It should be noted that the survey was occasioned by the passage of the Welch Act of May 28, 1928, which empowered the Personnel Classification Board to examine certain phases of the federal wage policies and administration.

At the outset the book catches the reader's imagination when the author points out how the size of the Federal personnel establishment turns light errors into large difficulties, slight economies into huge savings, and slight improvements into important reforms.

The first part of the report deals with a comprehensive governmental wage policy, the starting point for a personnel program. Included within the scope are problems of the niggardliness or liberality of government salaries; geographical differentials in wages; the automatic revisions of wages according to variations in the cost of living; minimum wages; and family allowances. Somewhat ironically the author observes that recent wage increases in the Federal service appear to have had little influence upon the employee's greater satisfaction or efficiency.

The second part of the report dealing with the need for an integrated personnel program treats more specifically with the processes by which employees are selected and placed; the apportionment, probation, transfer, training and broadening of employees; the administrative capacity of supervisors as a factor in employee efficiency; provision of employee incentives; efficiency ratings; labor turnover; the problem of employees who deserve to be dismissed for inefficiency; the effects of the preferences granted to war veterans; physical conditions of work; reductions of accidents, industrial hygiene, hours, vacations, and sick leaves; the adjust- ment of grievances; special problems of women in government service; and group representation through employees' committees (similar to the Whitley Councils of England) and relations with unions. Finally there in an outline of the possible types of organization for administering effectively the activities and functions assigned in personnel.

It is interesting to note that about three fifths of the recommendations in this report have been adopted since the survey was completed. Critics of our national government should give heed.

The task of this survey, accomplished in a comparatively short time, appears to have been stupendous, but in spite of this, the work is thorough, authoritative, and very readable. At the same time the book is a real contribution to the rapidly growing literature on public administration.