Kitabı oku: «Vanishing Landmarks», sayfa 8
A SELF-EVIDENT FACT
No government subordinate or bureau chief ever got into difficulty except when he did something. No one ever knew a refusal to act, or a delay in acting, to be the subject of judicial or legislative investigation. Pigeonholes all filled is infinitely safer than a few signed documents. This is fully recognized throughout the whole realm of public service and the result is logical – everything of a decisive nature is deferred as long as possible.
In 1906 Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to settle a claim for ice sold to the government for the use of the Union Army in 1863. I am the only official who, in more than forty years, could have been impeached for action taken in connection with that knotty problem.
Subordinates in corporations and private business are criticised and lose their positions for failure to act. With the government, men are discharged and disgraced only when they do act. Unless a clerk or bureau chief or head of a department is caught red-handed, so there can be no question of guilt, there is no way to rid the department of an incubus without great difficulty. What I am trying to emphasize is a fact that everyone knows, few recognize, fewer still admit and many deny, to-wit: That government, state and municipal affairs are necessarily conducted upon entirely different principles from ordinary business.
TWO ARMY INCIDENTS
I am indebted to an army officer for the following, which I have not verified and therefore cannot vouch for, but I give it simply because it is absolutely true to life.
During the Indian insurrections in Texas, a certain officer got word to his quartermaster that he must have supplies and ammunition at a given point on the Rio Grande River without delay or his detachment would be annihilated. The quartermaster must have been a civilian for, regardless of red tape and formality, he proceeded to act. He found a boat and sought to engage it. But the river was low and the owner dared not attempt the trip. “But,” said the quartermaster, “if you do not go, those men will be annihilated.” “If I do go,” said the owner, “my boat will be annihilated, and it’s the only boat I have. You have more men.”
Rather than fail, the quartermaster purchased the boat for twelve thousand dollars. He loaded it with supplies and ammunition, started it up the river and made his report. Promptly, the department at Washington refused to ratify the purchase, and reprimanded the quartermaster severely for exceeding his authority in purchasing a boat. I submit that the department was right. No member of Congress would vote to give a quartermaster authority to buy a river steamer. Even the Secretary of the Navy would need congressional authorization. Fortunately, the boat returned and the quartermaster tried to get the man to take it back. He refused. Then the quartermaster found a purchaser, sold the boat for twelve thousand five hundred dollars, paid the purchase price and sent five hundred dollars to Washington. Promptly the department refused to ratify the sale and again reprimanded the quartermaster because he had sold a boat without authority. And the department was again right. Congress never has given and never will give authority to a quartermaster or anyone to sell a boat or anything else except after prolonged condemnation proceedings, and then at auction. Any corporation, under like circumstances, would have made that quartermaster a vice-president. Instead his pay was held up, and he faced court martial until some comptroller risked his official life and reputation by closing the account, also in violation of law.
If I remember correctly, it was Colonel Phillips of the regular army who gave me this chapter from his experience: While in command at a frontier post he was asked by the department to make a recommendation concerning a certain matter. Following the regulations, he referred the matter to his quartermaster. The quartermaster reported favorably to the colonel in command, and he, as colonel, joined in the recommendation and sent it to Washington. In due time he received instructions to proceed and, again obeying regulations, he directed the quartermaster to carry out the instructions of the department. This was done and the quartermaster so reported to the colonel in command, and the colonel approved this report and forwarded it to the department. All of this was regular and would afford no occasion for comment but for the fact that Colonel Phillips, the officer in command, was also quartermaster. He had asked himself what had best be done, made his report to himself, approved the report made to himself, joined in his own recommendation, then directed himself what to do, reported to himself that it had been done and then, as commander of the post, had transmitted all the papers to the department, which, in course of time, were approved, and one more closed incident in the military affairs of the United States of America resulted. He had signed the same paper seven times and there had been no way to abbreviate.
I submit that if he had been in charge of railroad operations, some congestion of freight would have resulted while all these necessary formalities were being worked out.
I want it definitely understood that in recording these instances, no criticism is intended. No material improvement ever can be made without throwing wide open every conceivable door and shutter through which fraud and corruption not only can creep but leap and run. I give them for no other purpose than to prove established principles to which there are few if any exceptions, to-wit: That a republic in business is an ass.
CHAPTER XXII
THE POST OFFICE
The common belief that the Post Office Department is conducted along approved business methods is sought to be dissipated.
The advocates of government ownership continually remind you that the Post Office Department is a government managed affair. It is, and I think I am perfectly safe in saying that until the government took control of the railroads, cables, telegraph and telephone lines, commenced building ships and constructing airplanes, it was the worst managed institution on the face of the earth. And it has mattered little, if any, which political party has had control of its affairs.
For six years every new post office erected in the United States has borne upon its corner stone this inscription: “William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury.” As you have seen this evidence of official prominence in city after city in every state of the Union, have you wondered why the name of the Postmaster General did not appear above, or below, or at least on the rear of the building? It is simply because the Postmaster General has nothing in the world to do with the selection of sites, erection of buildings, or in their care or improvement. The Treasury Department buys and pays for the sites, prepares the plans, erects the buildings, repairs them, lights them, heats and janitors them. It also pays the rent of post office quarters where the government has not been as yet foolish enough to build. The Treasury Department also audits the accounts of all postmasters and not one dollar of all this expense is charged to postal receipts. Even the salary of the Postmaster General and all his clerks is paid from appropriations independent of postal revenues. Then, with no rent to pay, no coal or current to buy, with janitor and elevator service gratis and accounts audited, the Post Office Department has run behind an aggregate of something over two hundred million dollars. Any express company would be glad to take the Post Office Department off the hands of the government if it could have free rent, free coal, the salaries of their principal officers paid and all their accounts audited gratis, for sixty-five per cent of what it now costs the government to take care of our mail service.
RIVERS AND HARBORS
Under the Constitution, Congress has charge of all navigable streams and harbors and it has spent billions in their improvement. Colonel Hepburn once made the statement on the floor of the House that the appropriations for the improvement of the channel of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and the Gulf were sufficient to have built a ship canal of boiler iron between these two points. No one ever questioned the correctness of the statement.
A recent River and Harbor bill contained an appropriation to dredge the channel of a stream in Texas where the government’s engineers reported there was only one inch of water. Another brook in Arkansas with only six inches of water, got an appropriation. I assume that two more votes were necessary. I might add for the reader’s information that any stream in the United States can be made navigable in law by a joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress saying that it is navigable. Lawyers would call that navigable de jure but many of them cannot be made navigable de facto however much is expended in dredging and widening.
CHAPTER XXIII
CIVIL SERVICE
The sole purpose of discussing the Civil Service System in this connection is to show what must ensue if the government continues its trend and enlarges its business operations. Partisan politics cannot be eliminated, neither does the Civil Service secure the most efficient. Concrete and actual instances are given as illustrations.
So much has been said in favor of Civil Service by its friends, and so much criticism offered by those who know little about it, that I am impelled to submit a few observations drawn from five years’ experience at the head of a department having, a portion of the time, as high as twenty thousand people on its payroll, over ninety percent of whom were in the classified service.
It is not my purpose to criticise or commend. I do intend, however, to make reasonably clear some of the inevitable conditions that would ensue if the government should remain operator or should become owner and operator of railroads, merchant ships, express, cable, telegraph and telephone companies, and other public utilities, constructor of airplanes, merchant ships, and logically producers of all materials and supplies therefor.
Everyone concedes that to avoid complete partisan prostitution of these widely-extended and diversified interests, every agent, servant and employee, with the possible exception of unskilled laborers, would have to be covered under Civil Service. This would palliate the evil but, as we shall presently see, would not prevent political manipulation and influence, and would render efficient service absolutely impossible.
It will be idle to approach this subject without recognizing a very marked distinction between business operations and government service. Business is conducted primarily for the profit that legitimately results. The wise man knows, however, that the better the service, the more certain his rewards. The merchant who best serves his customers will have the most customers to serve, and the lawyer who best protects his clients will have the largest and the most lucrative practice. Service and profit are seldom divorced. If it be true, as has been said, that a grateful people will make a beaten path to the door of him who improves a mousetrap, it is also equally true that the world’s financial rewards are liberal beyond calculation to him who renders any substantial service.
This principle does not apply to government matters. Here the ultimate end is not profit, but power. While a political party may hope to be continued if its service is acceptable, it has no right to expect its administration will be acceptable if it neglects the ordinary methods by which approval is secured – which is politics. In politics, everything reasonable and honest is made to serve the ends of politics, exactly as in business everything reasonable and honest is made to contribute to profit.
A most natural result of public service is loyalty to superiors. This is true in a very marked degree in all government departments. If government clerks were to vote, I suppose three-fourths of them would support the party in power, without regard to which party it happened to be. One-half of the balance would fear even to vote lest they might cause offense and prejudice their promotion – the sole consideration with many department clerks – while only a comparative few would openly support the opposite party and some of these would subsequently regret it.
A case is current where an official who is supposed not to be devoid of future political ambition, said to a friend who had witnessed the obsequious servility of subordinates: “There are two million of these and every one is a voter.”
You will recognize that no promotion, demotion or dismissal within a business organization invites newspaper comment or criticism from friend or foe. In government service the exact opposite is the rule. When constituents inform a congressman that someone from his district has had his salary reduced, the whole delegation from that state get busy. Let it be known that some clerk has been longer in a department than another who has received more promotion, and an explanation is certain to be demanded, and it is relatively useless to urge inefficiency as the cause. In such cases the public ascribes but two causes, politics and favoritism.
While “offensive partisanship” is publicly forbidden, it is generally recognized on the inside that no activity of a partisan character is “offensive” so long as it is quiet, and is exercised in favor of the party in power. Public officials, of the rank of postmasters, customs and internal revenue collectors, and district attorneys are not expected to be delegates to political conventions, but I have never known their superiors, when of the same political faith, to object to their being in the town while the convention is in session, maintaining suitable headquarters at the hotel, and even volunteering valuable advice to those who happen to call, as well as to those who are sent for.
But politics is not the only weakness of the system. The public has been taught to believe that Civil Service examinations result in securing the most efficient. This is a serious delusion.
Those who take civil service examinations usually find their names rejected or upon the eligible list within six months. It takes about that long to classify. Any time within two years thereafter the applicant is liable to be certified and called.
When a requisition is made the Commission certifies three names. It is not at all likely that they are the three whose examinations show them the best qualified. That question is not considered – applicants either pass or fail. They are simply the three names at the head of the list from the state whose quota is not exhausted. The officer calling for the clerk examines the records of the certified names and makes a selection. Thereupon the applicant is notified to present himself at a given place where the minimum salary – in normal times seven hundred dollars per annum – awaits him. Even though he took his examination only twelve months before, the chances are he declines, giving as his reason that he is now getting a thousand dollars with good prospects of promotion.
It is only a question of time, however, when some applicant will be found who, during the period between examination and certification, varying from six months to two years and six months, has been unable to get a job at seven hundred dollars and he jumps at the chance to “serve his country.”
You knew this must be the way but probably you had not stopped to analyze it. The Civil Service screen is so constructed as to catch the small fish and allow the large ones to escape. And there is no way known to man to change it without opening wide the door for favoritism, which the Civil Service system is supposed to close and effectively bar.
Nevertheless some of the clerks and employees selected in this way develop a good degree of efficiency and prove far better than anyone would expect from an inspection of the machinery by which they are secured. With scarcely an exception they are honest and conscientious toilers, with very little ambition. A few have ambition but these should, and usually do, soon resign.
I have in mind a business organization with several thousand on its payroll. Its operations extend from ocean to ocean and its employees include geologists, chemists, engineers of every kind, purchasing agents, salesmen, superintendents of both construction and transportation, clerks, clear down to unskilled laborers. Everyone connected with the organization is made to understand that any position is open to him provided he can show greater efficiency than the incumbent. While most of the force have grown up within the organization, not all have been started at the minimum salary nor promoted because of length of service. The former is insisted upon, and the latter urged, by all friends of Civil Service.
Imagine such a concern as I have described, depending upon an outside commission to examine and certify the people whom it might employ in its clerical and technical force, and being bound by its own by-laws not to employ anyone selected in any other way. No business concern could face competition and survive under such a system. Yet everyone recognizes that when applied to government affairs, Civil Service is not only the best but the only way. I am not criticising it. I am only showing the inevitable result if we change the purpose of government from the greatest liberty institution in the world to a corporation for the transaction of business.
During five years that I recruited the force of the Treasury Department from names certified by the Civil Service Commission, nothing occurred to engender ill feeling. The members of the Commission and the officers of the Treasury Department understood each other perfectly and sympathized. Every member of the Commission sought as best he could – subject, of course, to the restrictions and limitations of his office – to serve the Treasury Department, and the Secretary of the Treasury, believing in Civil Service, reciprocated. There were, however, some rather plain and expressive letters exchanged. Believing that letters that actually passed between departments are the best proof of conditions as they exist, I have inserted in the Appendix the material correspondence covering four distinct cases.
Some of the letters were answered by personal interviews but enough remains to show the cordial feeling that existed, as well as the nature of the contentions. It also reveals the earnestness with which the Secretary of the Treasury sought some relaxation in the rules which friends of the system, as well as the members of the Commission, insist must be rigidly enforced, and which were rigidly enforced.
The last case cited relates to a request for experienced lawyers for special agents of the Treasury Department. The necessity for these will be apparent to every experienced business man.
Many of the tariff rates are ad valorem, the duty being levied upon the foreign market value of the imported merchandise. Importers are required to enter their goods at the price at which such articles are usually bought and sold in the country of their origin. Undervaluation by unscrupulous importers is the most common way of defrauding the government. Cases of alleged undervaluation are tried by the Board of General Appraisers, at which the importers are represented by lawyers who make a specialty of this class of cases. They are not only men of experience but many of them possess great natural aptitude. Some, I suppose, make as high as fifty thousand dollars per annum. The government is represented by attorneys who receive, if I remember correctly, three thousand dollars per annum, and the cases are usually prepared by special agents, or special employees, who receive from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars per annum. The government is at a tremendous disadvantage. I have heard it estimated that the Treasury loses two hundred million dollars per annum through undervaluations. I think this is excessive but unquestionably it runs into tens of millions.
I desired several country lawyers who had had actual experience in trying cases, and asked the Civil Service Commission to provide an eligible list. The need of capable men in this particular branch of the service is well illustrated by the following incidents.
Certain importers were entering their merchandise, which had been paid for in Indian rupees, as costing the bullion value of rupees, about twenty cents. England was maintaining the parity of the rupee at about fifty cents in our money. The Secretary of the Treasury certified that the rupee was worth fifty cents and directed that duties be collected accordingly. As was anticipated, the importers all paid under protest and one of them prosecuted an appeal. A decision against the government was rendered by the Board of General Appraisers and by all the courts including the Supreme Court of the United States. I ordered that another case be made and gave instructions how it should be prepared. Again, much to my surprise, the government was defeated. Investigation showed that the second case had been prepared exactly like the first. More detailed instructions were given and the government was successful, and more than one million dollars that had been paid by importers under protest, was saved to the government and at least two hundred thousand dollars per annum from then until now. Any country lawyer with a general practice would have known how to prepare and present the case in the first instance.
The Treasury Department has several special agents in Europe whose business it is to look after and discover evidence of undervaluation, as well as other frauds upon the revenues of the country. The Department knew that certain merchandise was viciously undervalued, but the special agents all failed to get material evidence. Special employees were not then under Civil Service and I got an up-state lawyer from New York to accept a position as special employee, sent him to Europe and he came back with evidence that secured advances in valuations which saved the government perhaps fifty thousand dollars a year from one importer alone.
Appendix “D” will show the material correspondence concerning this particular request for experienced trial lawyers. My first request is dated September 20, 1905; my second, October 14th of the same year. Finally the Commission replied and its first letter bears date of December 2, 1905. It mentions oral requests also having been made. Several examinations were held but up to the time I left the Treasury Department, March 4, 1907, no eligible list had been provided containing a single lawyer who had ever prepared or tried a case in any court. The department needed at least six, could have profitably used twelve, but could not and did not get one. If interested read Appendix “D.” You will detect enough spice to give it a flavor not its own.
The correspondence set out in Appendix “C” has reference to a tobacco examiner. Tobacco intended for Florida was being imported from Cuba at a certain inland city and then shipped back to Tampa and Key West. The duty on unstemmed wrapper tobacco was at that time $1.85 per pound and only 35 cents per pound on unstemmed filler tobacco. When any bale of tobacco contained more than fifteen per cent wrapper, the entire bale was dutiable as wrapper. There was a further provision that tobacco from two or more provinces or dependencies, if mixed, should be dutiable at $1.85 per pound, regardless of its character. Naturally, a tobacco examiner should know something about tobacco. In fact, that is the only subject that a tobacco examiner need know anything about. The correspondence will show the efforts made to secure one and the desire of the Civil Service Commission to aid, as well as the disaster which it believed would follow if the Treasury Department was allowed any voice in the manner of the examination or in classification of those who took the same.
Appendix “B” has reference to a tea examiner, another position that, in the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, should be filled by an expert.
The correspondence with reference to a tobacco examiner began some time in 1904. My first rejection of each of the three names certified as being eligible is dated December 15, 1904. The request for a tea examiner was made somewhat later. I quote a paragraph from the Civil Service Commission’s letter of December 9, 1905, which, though written with special reference to the request for eligible trial lawyers, mentions both tobacco and tea examiners:
“Your attention is also invited to the recent examination for tea examiner and tobacco examiner at the Port of – . Owing to objections by your Department to eligibles certified, it became necessary to hold three examinations before a selection was made for tobacco examiner and two examinations before a selection was made for tea examiner. The examinations finally resulted in the selection of the temporary employees, who, in the judgment of the Commission, after careful investigation, have no unusual qualifications for the duties to be performed and came in at the advanced age of sixty-three years. It seemed to the Commission so apparent that the examinations in question had not resulted in securing to the government the services of the most suitable competitors, that it became necessary for it to recommend to the President that it be relieved of all responsibility for these examinations and on November 18th, the President placed in the excepted class, one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at the Port of – , which employees do not now have the status of competitive employees.”
It will be noted that the Civil Service Commission itself finally recognized such a weakness in the system that it consented and even recommended that Treasury officials be permitted to select one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at one port, though the last phrase quoted seems to betray a slight apprehension of disaster resulting from there being in the United States two examiners, each requiring very accurate and technical qualifications, “who do not now have the status of competitive employees.”
Appendix “A” is limited to two letters written by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Civil Service Commission refusing to approve rules and regulations which it proposed to promulgate, unless the President so directed. I will add that the President did not so direct. In this instance, as in the last two, the Secretary of the Treasury had his way.
