There seem to be several shades of service opinion in regard to personnel measures, varying from indifference, if not opposition, to passive sympathy, and finally to active support. This is not unnatural. We are all anxious for the good of the service, but we would rather have that good tend in some way to our own welfare as well. We are perfectly sincere in this, and we cannot help scanning proposed measures to see how they are going to affect us in this regard.
The personnel bill introduced in the last session of Congress has the intention of promoting the good of the service. If any of its features do not promise to accomplish this end, they ought to be modified. Also, the good of the service has been made to include, as far as possible, the good of the individual. This is the point that has given rise to doubt in some instances, and is the foundation of most of the objections that have come to the notice of the writer.
The line personnel may be divided generally into three groups; first, those who were in the service before and were not affected by the legislation of 1882; second, those who were affected by this legislation, and those following them down to the present large classes; third, the present large classes, beginning with the class that entered in 1903.
Among the first group there is little opposition to the measure, so far as is known. For a year or two there would be a ten per cent elimination from the grade of captain, which would then cease for a dozen or more years; and there would be a continuous fifteen per cent elimination from the grade of rear-admiral This amount of elimination is less than by existing law, and will be very materially less when the eliminations cease in the grade of captain, that is, in a year or two. There are also other advantages; voluntary retirements take place at any time during the year, and captains of over thirty-seven years' service retire as rear-admirals.
These provisions will bring officers to flag rank continuously by the age of fifty-five years. The statement is sometimes heard that we have flag officers now as young as fifty-six, and that they will continually get younger; that captains now being promoted have passed through the grade of captain in four years, and as captains are now reaching their grade at the age of forty-eight, they will be rear-admirals at the age of fifty-two. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that the time of reaching the grade of captain has no necessary connection with the time of reaching flag rank. If eighteen rear-admirals are allowed, and the classes at the top of the list average nine members, it is obvious that flag officers will average two years in their grade (eighteen divided by nine equals two). Similarly, if the classes average six members, they will spend three years in the grade, and so on. Hence, the only considerations affecting the time of reaching flag rank are the number of flag officers allowed and the size of the classes at the time in that rank.
A glance at the Navy Register will show that the present classes at the top of the list average three to four members, which explains the fact of some of the present flag officers having five or six years to serve. But the classes of 1876 to 1879 inclusive average about ten members; so when these classes are reached, we shall be right back to the old conditions, that is, flag officers having only a year or two to serve before retirement. Any officer may form an estimate of the time he is apt to spend in flag rank by consulting the Navy Register and considering the size of the classes immediately preceding his own.
The officers of the second group are generally indifferent to the measure. The earlier classes were depleted by the legislation of 1882, which has given all the group rapid promotion. Present conditions being entirely satisfactory, they are content to let the future look out for itself. They do not like the graded retirement features, which they consider unfair and a violation of an implied contract. When shown that these graded rates would probably not affect them, but only the third group, they say they are not objecting for themselves, but as a matter of principle. It is a pity that because they are satisfied with the present they will not have an eye for the future as well.
The third group might be subject to graded retirement in ten to fifteen years, depending on the growth of the navy. No complaint is heard from this group. They realize that promotion for them under existing conditions is hopeless. The only method for any of them to be promoted in any reasonable time is for some of them to retire. Generally speaking, they are willing to take their chance on graded retirement since they realize that without some such plan they will spend their lives in the lower grades.
There remains something to say about vested rights and implied contracts, as well as the general fairness of the graded rates. Implied contract means that when an officer enters the service he is to be promoted in time to all the grades, barring misconduct, and is to be retired eventually on three-fourths pay. An officer who has served for some length of time under this implied contract acquires vested rights. It is not necessary to decide whether such a contract and rights really exist. It would be to the security of the individual, certainly, if they did exist; and it is desirable to continue to uphold them.
If they do exist, they have been violated in the existing personnel law, in retiring officers in advance of sixty-two years of age. Retiring them at graded rates of pay less than three-fourths of full pay would similarly be a further violation of such rights. The question now is whether such a violation, if it is a violation, is for the best interest of the whole service. If it is for such best interest, there is a precedent for it in the existing personnel law, and the matter of implied contract and vested rights may be left just where it stands at present.
It may be assumed that Congress will not authorize any law that increases the cost of the navy. If reasonable promotion is to take place, there must be some form of early retirement. If such retirements are at three-fourths pay, the cost of the navy will be materially increased. The graded rates of pay of the proposed personnel bill do not increase the cost of the personnel, number for number. Hence, graded rates seem to be the only recourse. The other alternative is to leave things as they are now, that is, to do nothing.
As to the abstract justice of the rates, the lowest rate is thirty-three per cent of $3900, that is $1287, after eighteen years' service. From this rate there is a gradual increase to three-fourths pay. Is $1287 a year too little for a man averaging thirty-five years of age and the first of his time and date whose services can best be spared with the least loss to the government? In natural justice, it is evidently liberal. It is, of course, not three-fourths pay, but that is going back to vested rights. If the officers who will be the ones to be affected, that is, the third group as above described, are willing to take their chances for the sake of the evident advantages to those who would remain in the service, then it would not seem that the second group, who only want to be let alone, have any just cause of complaint.
This matter of graded pay may be looked at from another point of view. Retirement pay is not pay at all in the sense of remuneration for services currently rendered. It is really a pension for services previously rendered. This has been upheld by the courts in a number of instances. The rate of pay actually received at the date of retirement may or may not be a measure of the whole service previously rendered, but the total pay that an officer has received during his whole service would be a just measure of such service. If each officer, under this assumption, were to be informed that hereafter an amount equal to fifty per cent of his pay for each year of his whole service would be set aside and paid him on retirement, he probably would be extremely satisfied.
Examining the graded rates of the bill from this point of view, the steps would be to compute the total pay of each officer from the date of graduation (when his real service begins) for each year up to the age of sixty-two years. Next, the graded rates regarded as an annuity would have to be capitalized. It will not be necessary to assume a rate of interest for this, as a comparison is all that is wanted. The annual pay multiplied by the expectation of life at the date of retirement will give the total amount to be paid.
Having made these computations, it will be seen that a rear-admiral of the upper half, retired on three-fourths pay at the age of sixty-two years, will receive forty-three per cent of his total previous pay on the active list, and that rear-admirals of the upper half retiring in advance of sixty-two years will average fifty-five per cent of their previous pay. Similarly, rear-admirals of the lower half will average sixty-one per cent of their previous pay. Captains, most of whom will have served over thirty years and will be drawing three-fourths pay, will average eighty-one per cent. Commanders under the graded rates will average ninety-nine per cent. Lieutenant-commanders will average one hundred and six per cent, and a lieutenant-commander of eighteen years' service will receive one hundred and fifteen per cent.
Hence, from this point of view, the graded rates are liberal in the extreme, and most liberal in the lowest grade to the officer of the least length of service of any to be retired under the operation of the law.