The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

32 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL eign Service School graduates, regardless of career goals, would initially be assigned to a consular office for about 18 months. The Promotion-Equity Crisis During the transition to a merit-based promotion system, a serious problem emerged. For the consuls, an officer list drawn up in order of excellence was no problem. But personnel records for their diplomatic colleagues were woefully inadequate. The Personnel Board felt constrained under the circumstances to use separate lists on a purely “temporary basis” until standards became more uniform. Carr had to concur. As a result, equal num- bers of officers in each specialty were promoted during the first year of the new system. But this failed to take into consideration the greater number of consuls (375 to 117), their longer average time-in-class and Service seniority. The issue came to a head in October 1925. Robert Skinner, an influential, high-ranking consular officer who had been actively involved in the Rogers reform effort, complained to Grew that half-measures and grudging concessions regarding Foreign Service unity did not fulfill the spirit of the Rogers Act. Most significantly, he provided figures that proved promotions favored diplomats. The Personnel Board researched the numbers and found, to its surprise and chagrin, that Skinner was right. But it took no action to remedy the situation. By mid-1926 Congress got wind of the dispute. With pressure mounting, the board asked the State Department’s solicitor to rule on the legality of maintaining separate promotion lists. Instructed that such a practice was illegal, the board belatedly unified its two lists, and followed this action in 1927 with a proposal for 44 additional consular officers to be granted immediate “reparation” promotions. That response failed to resolve the flap, however. Grew saw the writing on the wall, remarking: “We seem to have our hands particularly full of wildcats.” He was right. House and Senate resolutions called for a full investigation, and in April 1927, Sec- retary of State Frank Kellogg, upset by the whole situation, sought a shakeup of the Personnel Board. He proposed to President Coolidge that Grew be nominated as ambassador to Turkey, and that two other board members be nominated for ministerial posi- tions overseas. Although the three nominees were eventually confirmed, the department’s clumsy handling only reinforced the growing belief that reform of the Foreign Service was incomplete. The Moses-Linthicum Act Accordingly, Congress held hearings in 1928 with an eye to rewriting the Rogers Act. A bill strongly influenced by the consuls was introduced that year and served as a template for similar bills introduced over the next three years. In 1931, Senator George H. Moses, R-N.H., and Representative John C. Linthicum, D-Md., introduced a bill that passed and was signed into law by Presi- dent Herbert Hoover. Carr called it “one of the most important measures, and perhaps the most important, for the future welfare of the Foreign Service that has yet been enacted.” The Moses-LinthicumAct ordered a reorganization of the department’s personnel system, establishing a Division of Person- nel led by an assistant secretary to handle efficiency records and their evaluation. This official, together with two other assistant secretaries, would form a personnel board with the sole duty of recommending officers for promotion, demotion, transfer or separation. FSOs who were board members were made ineligible for promotion to minister or ambassador until three years after serving on the board. The act also set more liberal compensation rates and leave-of- absence rules and instituted optional retirement after 30 years of service, retroactive credit for service at unhealthful posts, more equitable representation, post allowances, within-class salary increases and other benefits. Further, it spelled out more stringent examination and appointment rules, and created new opportuni- ties for clerks to advance into the Service. The new act’s most important result, however, was psychologi- cal. It served to reassure all FSOs that there would be no recur- rence of the administrative stumbles that had led to the crisis of 1926-1927. A Great Legacy Nearly a century later, the Rogers Act, buttressed by the Moses- LinthicumAct, still serves as the foundation of the current Foreign Service. Of course, in hindsight it suffered fromweaknesses that somewhat limited the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, to a very large degree it accomplished the goals Rogers and his fellow reformers envisioned. Not until 1946, 22 years after its passage, was any noteworthy change to the Foreign Service’s structure deemed necessary. And even then, the Foreign Service Act of 1946 was, in essence, only an updated expression of the ideas Rogers had promulgated in 1924. His vision—and Wil- bur Carr’s—still determine to a large degree the conditions under which today’s Foreign Service personnel work and live. Sadly, neither Sen. Lodge nor Rep. Rogers lived long beyond the act’s passage. Lodge suffered a fatal stroke in November 1924, less than six months after its enactment, while Rogers died at the age of 43 in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 1925. n