Central office

“ The prestige that comes with an appointment to public office, however, is not yet matched by the pay scales, which have languished behind those prevalent in private industry and have caused the defection of some higher level experts from the public service. ”

“ I concur with those who think, that, looking to the present, and looking also to the future, and regarding all the probabilities that await us in reference to the character and qualities of those who may fill the executive chair, it is important to the stability of government and the welfare of the people that there should be a check to the progress of official influence and patronage. The unlimited power to grant office, and to take it away, gives a command over the hopes and fears of a vast multitude of men. ”

“ In one word, if you want to have a reform Administration, you must have, at least at the head of the three great “patronage” Departments, the Treasury, the Post-Office and the Interior, men who understand reform as you do, who believe in it as you do, who are willing to fight for it as you are and who will not be swerved from their purpose by any political seduction, even if they should be prospective candidates for the Presidency—the severest trial to which the political virtue of a public man can be exposed. ”

“ I have pledged myself and my colleagues in the cabinet to a continuous encouragement of initiative, responsibility and energy in serving the public interest. Let every public servant know, whether his post is high or low, that a man's rank and reputation in this Administration will be determined by the size of the job he does, and not by the size of his staff, his office or his budget. Let it be clear that this Administration recognizes the value of dissent and daring--that we greet healthy controversy as the hallmark of healthy change. Let the public service be a proud and lively career. ”

“ Moving in its own clearly defined orbit, without usurpation or lessening of prerogative, the great executive office, at the close as at the beginning of the century, is the recognized constitutional symbol of authority and of power. The delegated functions and prerogatives that pertained in our infancy and weakness have proved ample in the days of our strength and greatness as a nation. ”

“ The difference is that the doctor will be paid by the Government, out of funds provided by everybody.
Choose a doctor now—ask him to be your doctor under the new arrangements. Many will choose their present doctors. Any doctor can decline to accept a patient. If one doctor cannot accept you, ask another, or ask to be put in touch with one by the new "Executive Council" which has been set up in your area (you can get its address from the Post Office) . ”

“ Danish political life is marked by an uncommon political stability. As in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland the average tenure in office of particular governments since World War II has been 3 years. Prime Ministers and other ministers may continue through several Cabinets, virtually making a career of their days in office. ”

“ By the same clearness of arrangement, the departments and sub-departments are prevented from clashing, as well as from resisting or thwarting the sovereign power. Not being covered with the mystery of a crude and confused organisation, the administrative machine is not impervious to discerning observation and criticism; and the endeavours of the central authority to control and direct its movements, are, therefore, enlightened and assisted by an intelligent public opinion. ”

“ One of the conditions precedent to any real and lasting reform of the civil service, in a country whose public service is moulded by the conditions of self-government, is the drawing of a sharp line of distinction between those offices which are political and those which are non-political. The strictest rules of business discipline, of merit-tenure and earned promotion, must rule every office whose incumbent has naught to do with choosing between policies ”

“ The Government officials that there are at the present moment, will be under the control of that Executive Department or in other words, every office and the government itself will be responsible to the people of this country. ”

“ On the average, 85% of the electorate has participated in the 11 postwar national elections. Illiteracy is virtually unknown; newspaper circulation is exceedingly high. Thus, the politician faces not only an active but also an enlightened public. The office-seeker may reason with the voter successfully, but lecturing him usually produces resentment. ”

“ I need not tell you of the business the subordinate officers of the Government are now so arduously engaged in. Woe to the unfortunate place-holder who dares to call his soul his own and to utter a doubt as to the perfections of his master! He will soon learn that men can be reformed out of office as quickly as into it.
Civil service reform! Never have worthless favorites or political agents been kept in profitable and responsible places in bolder defiance of principle and public opinion. ”

“ Moreover, we wish to make it clear that we are not necessarily standing for a division of power. There may be separately constituted departments of government, one primarily for administration, the other primarily for legislation, yet a concentration of authority in one of them, as in the case under the cabinet system of Europe. The gentlemen of the opposition are advocating not only a concentration of power, but a fusion of functions as well. Their commission is at once the executive cabinet and the legislative body. ”

“ The civil officials with which the public is most familiar are postal employees, officers of the federal courts, and revenue officials. Such persons usually hold office while their party is in power or during good behavior. Long tenure of office tends to conservative measures and the spirit of bureaucracy, while a system by which civil office is regarded as party spoil tends to corruption and inefficiency. The business of administration is becoming increasingly important in the modern state. ”

“ Government departments and officials would be multiplied in order to cope with the necessary increase of routine work, the executive and judicial functions would be carefully separated, and the individual civil servant would become a mere member or mouthpiece of a single department, instead of uniting in his own person—as he does at present—half a dozen different executive functions and wide discretionary powers with regard to general administration. ”

“ This then novel application of the democratic principle, exemplified in the federal service by the spoils system, led, in the state and local governments, to the popular election for short terms of purely administrative officials. It is a curious fact that the state governments, which imitated the federal system in most respects, have always departed from it in one of its most important features—the centralization of the administrative service in the hands of the chief executive. ”

“ By reason, also, of its popular origin, and the frequency with which the short term of office of its members requires the renewal of their authority at the hands of the people,-the great source of all power in this country,-encroachments by that body on the domain of co-ordinate branches of the government would be receive with less distrust than a similar exercise of unwarranted power by any other department of the government. ”

“ The penurious provision made for those who filled the high executive departments in the American government, excluded from a long continuance in office all those whose fortunes were moderate, and whose professional talents placed a decent independence within their reach. ”

“ But the Federal government of a democracy must be advised by the constituency which is most interested in its action. Offices must be filled; protections and guaranties, both civil and military, must be furnished, according to the necessity and preferences of the people for whose benefit chiefly they are designed. In our own country at present it is comparatively easy to learn what these requirements are. Our people are accustomed to deliberate upon political measures, and know how to convey the fair result of their deliberations to the understanding of the central government. ”

“ These powers, judiciously and temperately exercised by a committee of all the Government departments concerned—viz., the Treasury, Foreign Office, Admiralty, War Office, India Office, Colonial Office, Board of Trade, and Post Office—are ample to secure the interests of the public against the interests of any section of the community. ”

“ Sir, the theory of our institutions is plain; it is, that government is an agency created for the good of the people, and that every person in office is the agent and servant of the people. Offices are created, not for the benefit of those who are to fill them, but for the public convenience ”

“ He will therefore have every inducement to lend a helping hand in the introduction of a thorough and permanent reform of the civil service, which, proceeding upon the idea that established character, knowledge and capability ought to be the only test of fitness for office, will at last give the country an able, honest and economical administration of the public business. ”

“ The vast machine of government has outgrown the power of the controlling mechanism.
We trust for the control of the immense bureaucratic machine, almost entirely to the presence, at the head of each department, of a political minister directly responsible to Parliament. We hold the minister responsible for everything that happens in his office, and we regard this ministerial responsibility as one of the keystones of our system. ”

“ To decide for what public objects local superintendence is best suited, and what are those which should be kept immediately under the central government, or under a mixed system of local management and central superintendence, is a question not of political economy, but of administration. ”

“ That is not a foreign but a familiar and domestic government whose officer is your next-door neighbor, whose representatives you deal with every day at the post-office and the custom-house, whose courts sit in your own State, and send their own marshals into your own county to arrest your own fellow-townsman, or to call you yourself by writ to their witness-stands. And who can help respecting officials whom he knows to be backed by the authority and even, by the power of the whole nation, in the performance of the duties in which he sees them every day engaged? ”

“ It is, I suppose, beyond dispute that the intention of that provision was to protect the members of the Legislative branch of the Government from Executive influence. The legislator was not to be induced to create a civil office, or to increase its emoluments, at the request of the Executive, in the hope that he might be appointed. He was to preserve his independence of Executive influence, and to approach all questions in which he might have to deal with matters which concerned the Executive power, or Executive action, absolutely free from any bias. ”

“ Of course every new province into which Congress has been allured by the principle of implied powers has required for its administration a greater or less enlargement of the national civil service, which now, through its hundred thousand officers, carries into every community of the land a sense of federal power, as the power of powers, and fixes the federal authority, as it were, in the very habits of society. ”

“ Of course, all offices created by the Constitution, and all governmental agencies existing under its sanction, must be recognized, in a sense, as the offices and agencies of the people—considered either as an aggregation constituting the national body politic, or some of its divisions. When, however, I now speak of the 11 Presidency as being preëminently the people’s office, I mean that it is especially the office related to the people as individuals, in no general, local, or other combination, but standing on the firm footing of manhood and American citizenship. ”

“ Experience has demonstrated the more than human wisdom of the framers of the great federal compact which for more than a century, in peace and amid the stress of war, has held States and people in indissoluble bond of union. In no part of their matchless handiwork has it been more clearly manifested than in the creation of a responsible executive. To secure in the largest measure the great ends of government, responsibility must attach to the executive office ”

“ He should understand what administrative policy would be most beneficial to the nation. He should also have the knowledge and disposition to wisely exercise the appointing power, so far as it is constitutionally within his control, and select only good and capable men for the office. ”

“ According to the division in question, the King, Lords, and Commons, as composing the sovereign Parliament, are the legislative power: the King, in his ministerial character, with the aggregate of the functionaries deriving their functions from him, are the administrative or executive authority.—In regard to the sovereign, (whether an individual or a body,) this division is palpably false. All political powers, actual and possible, reside actively or passively in the central authority; and all such powers residing in others are merely emanations from it. ”

“ The office of the Executive falls into my hands at a peculiar period in our history as a State. Contemplating alone the vastness of its extent, the diversified interests of its people, and the character of its resources, yet undeveloped, there is enough to demand continued labor and attention, in order to apply the benefits of government with sound discretion, and a proper regard to the relative demands of each interest ”