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In his instructions to the second Philippine Commission, President McKinley designated "the establishment of a system to secure an efficient civil service" as one of the first tasks that this body should undertake upon its assumption of legislative power in September, 1900. Pursuant to the direction of the president, one of the earliest statutes enacted by the Commission—the fifth—was a civil service law. Many other statements and actions reveal that virtually all of the Americans who were primarily responsible for the establishment of modernized political institutions in the Philippine Islands recognized that a civil service based upon the merit system and divorced from politics was essential to the success of the program of the United States in its great Oriental dependency. Today the character of the Philippine civil service is one of the criteria by which the results of that program may be judged.As part of a study of this institution, the writer has made inquiry into the antecedents, the education, and the careers of the higher administrative officials of the Philippine government. Data were secured from the service records of 56 of the under-secretaries, bureau chiefs, and assistant chiefs, and in almost every instance was supplemented by a personal interview.