Patchwork & Politics

President Washington ran the U. S. with only three executive departments--State, War, Treasury. The others were added to the Cabinet in the following order: Navy, under Adams; Post Office, under Jackson; Interior, under Taylor; Justice, under Grant; Agriculture, under Cleveland; Commerce, under Roosevelt; Labor, under Wilson. Also in the fertile soil of executive government has grown up a weedy mass of independent boards and bureaus. President Arthur set up the Civil Service Commission. The Interstate Commerce Commission came into being under President Cleveland. President Roosevelt produced the International Joint Commission and President Taft, the Commission on Fine Arts. President Wilson was responsible for the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission, the Tariff Commission, the Shipping Board and the Federal Power Commission. President Coolidge added the Federal Radio Commission, the Board of Tax Appeals and the Board of Mediation. President Hoover brought the Federal Farm Board into being.

In a special message last week President Hoover appealed to Congress to modernize this patchwork of executive Government. President Taft did the same thing in 1910. Ever since bureaucratic favoritism and political logrolling have blocked all presidential attempts at reorganization.

This time President Hoover's prime argument was Treasury economy during the Depression. He estimated a public saving of "many millions of dollars annually." Repeated were all the old familiar arguments about overlap, waste, extravagance and inefficiency in the present administrative machine. There are today, according to the President, 150 to 200 separate Government units, all growing lustily.

President Harding attempted to reorganize the executive branch by having Walter Folger Brown, now Postmaster General, draw up an elaborate plan which specified all the proposed changes, consolidations and eliminations. As a rigid target for every opposing force, the Brown plan died aborning. Shrewder than his predecessor, President Hoover gave Congress no cut-&-dried set of specifications last week, but, instead, asked for broad powers to shift, shuffle, trim and weed existing agencies as he thought best by executive order. To appease the Congressional sense of importance he stipulated that his reorganization orders would lie before Congress for 60 days before becoming effective.

But as part of his reorganization plan President Hoover also wanted to create some new jobs. "There is," said he, "an insufficient number of officials of definite and concentrated responsibility." Therefore he proposed: 1) a Public Works Administrator who would have charge of all Government building; 2) an Assistant Secretary for Public Health in the Treasury Department; 3) an Assistant Secretary for Merchant Marine in the Department of Commerce; 4) an Assistant Secretary for Conservation in the Interior Department. In addition he would raise the Commissioner of Education and the Director of Agricultural Economics to sub-Cabinet rank. He figured such new jobs would cost $40,000 more per year but would effect a saving of "many times this sum."

For nearly three months the homely authority of John Nance ("Jack") Garner has kept the Democratic House of Representatives trotting along peacefully behind President Hoover's relief measures. Many a fighting Democrat was irked at this political docility. The President's reorganization proposal came as a signal for the House to break and run on its own. Democratic leaders got hold of advance copies of the President's message, announced, just one day before its reading in the House, their own plans for a survey of the executive Government to effect economies. When grizzled old Speaker Garner officially heard what Mr. Hoover proposed, he was all primed to explode:

"Hell's bells! It's idiotic and astounding! The President wants to create some new offices. Gosh, we want to abolish bureaus and commissions. I don't think the country wants any new offices at this time. ... As for reorganization, why doesn't the President say how he wants it done? He just generalizes as he always does."

Representative Rainey, the Democratic floor leader, was no less hostile toward the President's plan: "We're not going to do it. This isn't the President's baby. It's ours. If this is the best the President can do in advising Congress we don't need any more suggestions from him."

Representative Byrns, chairman of the potent Appropriations Committee, declared that, at Mr. Hoover's suggestion, the Patent Office had been transferred from the Interior Department to the Commerce Department and its annual cost had thereafter risen from $3,708,000 to $5,236,750. He also emphasized the President's own addiction to new commissions and special boards and suggested he could make a better start toward reorganization economy by abolishing some of them.

Democratic ideas on reorganization were wholly focused on a bill by Representative Byrns to consolidate the Army and Navy into one Department of National Defense. To this ancient and much discussed proposal President Hoover is strongly opposed. Challenged Mr. Byrns: "My bill will save $100,000,000 annually in expenditures and will not interfere with the efficiency of the fighting forces. If the President really wants economy, he can save vastly more by passage of my bill than through any other action."

Typical of the Administration's opposition to the Byrns bill was a letter from General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff, who declared: "No other measure proposed in recent years seems to be fraught with such potential possibilities of disaster for the United States. . . . Pass this bill and every potential enemy of the United States will rejoice." Unfrightened, the Democratic majority prepared to pass it this week as an earnest of their interest in reorganization.

To these Democratic sallies President Hoover made two indirect counter attacks. The White House announced that advance copies of the President's special message were distributed two full days before House Democrats had anything at all to say about reorganization. Also, as proof that reorganization really was a Hoover "baby," the White House gave out a 40-page pamphlet quoting all the President's public pleas for governmental consolidation since 1920.

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