Bureau

“ Between four and five thousand people find employment within the Bureau, the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Thousands of visitors annually witness the wonders therein displayed and come away impressed with the marvels they have seen in the adaption of means to a definite purpose. The care and comfort of the employes is a matter of deep concern to the Director and every possible method of providing for both, by approved means of sanitation and ventilation, is availed of. ”

“ The Bureau of Plant Industry, the creation of which has involved the most reorganization of any of the new bureaus, combines under one head the work in nine different branches, each presided over by an expert, and with a corps of more than two hundred efficient workers. The unification of work and the closer cooperation which have resulted, together with the economy of time in administration, lead the secretary to recommend a further extension of the bureau system in the department. ”

“ Say that you have accepted your appointment, and are prepared to take up at once the duties appertaining to your new position. No doubt during your "attacks" upon the Milestones you will have come across several of the officials of the Public Squander Department. So when you arrive in the hall of your new bureau you will be recognised at once by most of the messengers. You will be conducted with deference to your new quarters. You will find them very comfortable. ”

“ Among the many bureaus in the department over which you so ably exercise the directorship, there is none, perhaps, whose duties are so varied and which embraces a system so diversified in its branches and which is required to be so persistently active, as the Electrical Bureau. ”

“ The estimates of the distributive department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus representing the particular industries, and these set the men at work. Each bureau is responsible for the task given it. ”

“ That instead of an unpaid board of twelve members, appointed from the judicial districts, there should be a board of nine, of whom one should be a woman; three members should be paid and should give all their time to the work, one of the three to be president of the board, one the chairman of a bureau for mental deficiency, and the third, chairman of a bureau for dependent children; the six unpaid members were to be specialists in the special classes of work which is supervised by the board. ”

“ If a junior clerk asked these questions, he would be “pooh-poohed!” It is only the head of an office that can get them answered. It is he, and he only, that brings the rubbish of office to the burning glass of sense.
The immense importance of such a fresh mind is greatest in a country where business changes most. A dead, inactive, agricultural country may be governed by an unalterable bureau for years and years, and no harm come of it. If a wise man arranged the bureau rightly in the beginning, it may run rightly a long time. ”

“ All officers and agents of the bureau, who may be on duty within the territorial limits of any post, will report to its commander, and will be governed by his instructions in all that relates to the protection of persons and property, under the laws of the United States, the regulations of the bureau, and the orders of the district commander. In all that relates to the details of administration, they will report as heretofore to the assistant commissioner for the state in which they are stationed. ”

“ To aid the Secretary of State, an Assistant Secretary was provided for in 1853; in 1866 a second assistant was created, and in 1874 a third, each charged with the supervision of a particular branch of the department. The business of the department is distributed among seven bureaus, namely, a diplomatic bureau, a consular bureau, a bureau of indexes and archives, a bureau of accounts, a bureau of rolls and library, a bureau of foreign commerce, created in 1897 (formerly the bureau of statistics) , and a bureau of appointments, created in 1898. ”

“ You and the auditor will have to work out the details as to the necessary bureau in your office, depositaries for money, interline relations and numerous other propositions which usually become self-suggesting when the broad working principles are established. ”

“ Wherever human energies are now being directed toward more efficient public service, we find the consolidation under one administrative unit or bureau of all departments which deal either in direct or different manner with the same general subject. Investigation develops many duplications in both labor and expense in the departments of the state. ”

“ In Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness to one another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have met with several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we are about to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our most important ministries. ”

“ The inconveniences suffered on account of the insufficiency of room are a constant source of complaint. Only four of the eight bureaus of the Interior Department are accommodated in the building, namely, the Patent Office, the Land Office, the Indian Bureau, and the Bureau of Railroad Accounts. ”

“ The name of each bureau indicates broadly the nature of the business assigned to it. Besides the Secretary and the three assistant secretaries there is a solicitor, detailed from the Department of Justice, an assistant solicitor, created in 1900, seven chiefs of bureaus, two translators, sixty-three clerks, and a number of messengers, making a total force of about one hundred employees. ”

“ In each local office the chief is supreme. He investigates his own men, invites them to join, and directs their work. As already stated, there is a double organization of the local field—a classified organization of trades, professions, industries, hotels, large individual establishments, and office buildings; and a Bureau of Investigation whose organization is territorial. Uniform blanks for reports and records are made up after models supplied by national headquarters, and uniform methods of making investigations are adopted. ”

“ Poiret [his eyes wide open] . “Monsieur, a government clerk is, logically speaking, a man who needs the salary to maintain himself, and is not free to get out of his place; for he doesn’t know how to do anything but copy papers.”
Bixiou. “Ah! now we are coming to a conclusion. So the bureau is the clerk’s shell, husk, pod. No clerk without a bureau, no bureau without a clerk. But what do you make, then, of a customs officer?” [Poiret shuffles his feet and tries to edge away; Bixiou twists off one button and catches him by another.] ”

“ The military officers in the bureaus, responsive to a resolution of the House of Representatives, are reporting their ages, and most of them admit they are able-bodied and fit for service in the field. They have no fear of being transferred to the front, supposing themselves indispensable as bureau officers. ”

“ In form the institution is Parliamentary—that is to say, it consists of an assembly of deputies which meets regularly once a year, and of a permanent executive bureau elected by the Assembly from among its members. ”

“ Godard. “The clerk is the order, the functionary the species.”
Bixiou [laughing] . “I shouldn’t have thought you capable of that distinction, my brave subordinate.”
Poiret [trying to get away] . “Incomprehensible!”
Bixiou. “La, la, papa, don’t step on your tether. If you stand still and listen, we shall come to an understanding before long. Now, here’s an axiom which I bequeath to this bureau and to all bureaus: Where the clerk ends, the functionary begins; where the functionary ends, the statesman rises. There are very few statesmen among the prefects. ”

“ It is my purpose to establish bureaus through the congested portions of the United States where men and women in search of employment can register and be supplied with information as to where and what kind of work is obtainable. ”

“ Obviously, this situation leaves only the third alternative; that is, that the Department furnish to the employing departments the basic data concerning the activities of the individual subjects as a possible means of concluding the case. It is assumed, of course, that the employing departments will take administrative action against the subjects who are employed in these departments. If you desire to follow this course of action, I will arrange to have Bureau supervisors prepare appropriate summaries in such form that you may transmit them to the interested government departments. ”

“ The executive order constitutes a board composed of ten representatives from different departments and bureaus of the Government service, to which all questions relating to the work of the board that may arise in the departments are to be referred, and requires all persons in the Government service to respect the decisions that may be rendered. ”

“ If the Philadelphia post-office is devoid of these requisites as regards its exterior, its interior makes full amends.
Every department is so constructed and arranged that there is no clashing or cause of impediment in the general routine of its business. Each man has his position, each bureau its place, and over all the chief clerk, from an elevated position, has an eye to every action and movement of the employees. ”

“ There is nothing but what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff; in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a good deal to attend to ”

“ Bureaucracy holds all things and the administration itself in leading strings; it stifles men of talent who are bold enough to be independent of it or to enlighten it on its own follies. About the time of which we write the pension list had just been issued, and on it Rabourdin saw the name of an underling in office rated for a larger sum than the old colonels, maimed and wounded for their country. ”

“ The reader must have haunted the bureaus of the ministerial departments before he can realize how much their petty and belittling life resembles that of seminaries. Wherever men live collectively this likeness is obvious ”

“ No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth. ”

“ The Bureau of Air Commerce feels that no effort should be spared to make available the new radio approach system which has been successfully tested by the Bureau for the past 18 months and equipment for which has been on order for some months. ”

“ Several distinguished doctors have remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. ”

“ The Census Bureau has a primary obligation to protect the confidentiality of individual responses to the Census. As part of this confidentiality commitment, the Census Bureau does not currently release individual census questionnaires (or any other information that could identify an individual) until 72 years after a Decennial Census was taken. ”

“ A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality.
The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy—a bureaucracy trained from early life to its special avocation—is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business. ”

“ If the time of the workers is considered, the vegetable dyes now employed in the Philippines are more expensive than the artificial dyes, even though the latter are now sold in wastefully small packages and bear the burden of several large profits before they come to the hands of the persons using them.1
1 The Bureau of Education has taken steps to procure a series of dyes suited to each one of the mat straws and other important fibers used in household industries and industrial instruction in the Philippines. ”

“ As to the administration of the Post-Office, it requires so much of capacity for business management in detail and in great variety, and so high a degree of practical business training and habit of a peculiar kind which has so far to a great extent been foreign to my mind, that I should fear to undertake it, while I certainly recognize the very great importance of that Department with regard to the elevation of the civil service to a higher level of character and efficiency. ”

“ In the administration of a department such as that of Commerce and Labor, it was important to familiarize one's self as much as possible with its outlying branches, to become personally acquainted with the various officers and the details of their work and surroundings, thereby to enable one better to do the administrative work than by remaining at one's desk. ”

“ It was natural that the appearance of a department devoted to men in a woman's magazine should attract immediate attention. The department took up the various interests of a man's life, such as real efficiency; his duties as an employer and his usefulness to his employees; the employee's attitude toward his employer; the relations of men and women; a father's relations to his sons and daughters; a man's duty to his community; the public-school system; a man's relation to his church, and kindred topics. ”