THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS

Unpleasant little things may have afflicted Massachusetts Republicans on Election Day, but national good fortune has its redeeming features. And so "the political plum tree," announces a news despatch in a Boston Paper, will he loaded down with "2000 luscious jobs" when the federal census is take in 1930. Most of the workers will receive only from $80 to $200 for two weeks work, but for those who are more deserving, there are a number of "very fat" positions as supervisors. Evidently the only question worrying the leaders of the Grand Old Party in the Bay State is just how the places will be divided up among the supporters of the various powers that be. But on the basis of "proper amounts of gratitude" to the Republican party and to the individual congressmen, it is hinted it will be easy to make "working agreements."

Unfortunately there lurks in the back ground the alarming possibility of civil service regulation. A Democratic Senator has proposed the idea. Of course there is really little danger, particularly because administration officials, it is said, hope to obtain enumerators of "a very high standard of intelligence," such as members of women's clubs, who will volunteer for the work "as a patriotic duty." Obviously such people could be persuaded to serve only by a system of unrestricted appointment. So that whatever one may think in comparing the different reasons offered the conclusion in high circles is unanimously for high-minded patronage.

From time to time the system does lead to happy results, as in the recent appointment of Mr. Gow as Postmaster of Boston. Perhaps the next four years of Republican rule may even bring a new post-office building to replace that antiquated structure whose granite is still chipped by water that fell on it during the great fire of 1872. And in this matter of repaying loyal party workers, no gentleman in public life, however aggrieved by elections or other petty matters, would demean himself by similarly dampening the Roman candles of this Republican triumph.