RISE OF BUREAUCRACY

While the bureau is an important element in Government activities, it also affords an opportunity for ambitious directors (and all directors should be ambitious) to leave the base on which they are supposed to stay. I do not except even the bureau over which I presided for nearly thirty years from having at various times had attacks of this grasping disposition. The Honorable Frank A. Lowden says, in World's Work, December, 1926:

"The Government official is inclined to exaggerate the importance of his office. He is constantly endeavoring to expand its scope. He is properly jealous of his authority. * * * I think that this tendency is inevitable. * * * Where, however, the enterprise is a vast one, as in Government, or as in a great business organization, these tendencies, if left uncontrolled, are likely to inflict serious injury upon the service. * * * The original purpose of the creation of the Bureau is finally lost sight of and it is likely to seem to those who direct it an end and not a means."

It would be well to add to the warnings of President Coolidge and Governor Lowden in regard to mixing up business with Government, the opinion also of another expert along the same line. Mr. Merle Thorpe, editor of Nation's Business, published under the auspices of the National Chamber of Commerce, made this interesting statement before the National Association of Real Estate Boards held (Sept. 18, 1927) in Seattle, Washington. The title of his address was "From Bottom Up or Top Down."

"Because of our failure to do things for ourselves, we are calling upon the government to do everything under the sun. Statute books are groaning. Regulations are myriad. Bureaus and commissions spring up overnight. Taxes are mounting, and naturally, because every one of the laws we put upon the statute books requires administration and more people on the tax payroll. To-day it is estimated that each ten families in the United States feed and keep another family on the tax payroll. Two months' production of each man, woman, and child, out of the twelve, now go to keep up the tax payroll.

"'Let the Government do it!' is our favorite panacea. Of course, the politicians do not object. In fact, there have been occasions where they have been known to encourage legislation and join in the national anthem, 'There ought to be a law--'

"The waste and inefficiency and mounting costs, however, are not the greatest penalties we pay for doing the nation's work from the top down. Most of the legislation is directed at business and business is no longer the simple act of trade and barter it once was. It has become most complex. Business is so interrelated, so interdependent, that a law regulating this industry reaches out and out and affects scores of us thousands of miles away.

"It is a wise man indeed, who can see through and through to its conclusion a simple piece of economic legislation. We shall never know how much the orgy of lawmaking has slowed down the legitimate task of furnishing food and shelter and clothing, to say nothing of the luxuries of life, to those who need and want them, but it is safe to say it has done a great deal.

"The breaking point will come. Already there have been four parliamentary governments overthrown and dictators rule to-day. As Mussolini says, 'Democracy, with its endless talk and politics, has miserably failed.' We may never come to that situation of dictatorship in the United States, but we may reach a stage where democracy and its accredited representatives are discredited. That would be disastrous, for democracy is based upon confidence.

"Disastrous, too, for it would destroy the one thing which has made this country great, 'individual reward for individual initiative.' Every time we ask government to do something which we as individuals, or groups, or communities, can do better for ourselves, we are striking at that individualism which has given us our strength."

Bureaus are either created by Act of Congress or by executive order. In the latter case Congress must approve the executive act by appropriations for specific purpose. By specific legislations Congress also assigns to certain bureaus special duties which presumably can not be abrogated by executive orders. It follows that all expansive work must lie in the scope of the bureau and in harmony with problems already allocated.