Government bureau

“ In 1888, it became a separate department. It is a purely statistical bureau. It collects and publishes statistics on the cost of production, on wages, labor statistics, etc. Its six published reports are on (1) Industrial Depressions, (2) Convict Labor, (3) Strikes and Lockouts, (4) Working Women in Large Cities, (5) Marriage and Divorce, and (6) Railroad Employés.
Had all the executive departments been created at one time by a constitutional convention, we should be justified in expecting a greater symmetry and uniformity in the naming and grouping of chief officials. ”

“ Each executive department has certain public functions and duties, the performance of which is absolutely necessary to the existence of the government, but it may temporarily, at least, operate with seeming harshness upon individuals. ”

“ It is to be hoped that an act, so necessary to the proper legal appointments of the public service, and reasonable justice to faithful and competent employes, will be considered and enacted at the coming session of Congress.
The operations of the civil service, so far as this Bureau is concerned, have been highly satisfactory. There is an increased demand for accuracy and efficiency in the manner in which the public work is performed. ”

“ The Director of the United States Bureau of Mines shall prepare and publish, subject to the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, under the appropriations made from time to time by Congress, reports of inquiries and investigations, with appropriate recommendations of the bureau, concerning the nature, causes, and prevention of accidents, and the improvement of conditions, methods, and equipment, with special reference to health, safety, and prevention of waste in the mining, quarrying, metallurgical, and other mineral industries ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their fundamental principle is, that all power is in the people, and that public officers are but their trustees and servants, responsible to them for the execution of their trusts. And yet, in the various ramifications of the executive power, in the thousand agencies necessary to the convenience and interests of the people, which belong to that department, there is, in effect, no responsibility whatever. ”

“ Parliament has, no doubt, in many cases, delegated to the administrative organs of the state a final authority to grant special powers to local bodies or private companies, or at least to sanction their use ”

“ The Constitution has not only made a general delegation of the legislative power to one branch of the Government, of the executive to another, and of the judicial to the third, but it has specifically defined the general powers and duties of each of those departments. ”

“ And, Honorable Judges, the whole experience of government proves the absolute necessity for a separate legislative department. Look where you will, and in each case there is an executive cabinet, based upon appointment, untrammelled by the burdens of legislation, and subjected to the criticism and control of a reviewing body. In Europe, the city councils are elected by the people, and the administrative departments are made up through a process of selection and appointment, together with the assurance of reasonable permanence of tenure, responsibility, and adequate support. ”

“ But with us there is no such intimate relationship between legislative and executive service. From experience in state administration to trial in the larger sphere of federal administration is the only natural order of promotion. We ought, therefore, to hail the recognition of this fact as in keeping with the general plan of the federal Constitution. The business of the President, occasionally great, is usually not much above routine. Most of the time it is mere administration, mere obedience of directions from the masters of policy, the Standing Committees. ”

“ The existence of a cabinet, however, was always taken for granted in the discussion and formation of the constitution. It is a creation of custom and has no powers other than of advice and counsel to the President. The growth of executive and administrative business is not fully indicated by the increase in the number of departments. The growth within each department has been much greater. ”

“ All America have at length concurred in the propriety of establishing a distinct executive department. The principle is embraced in every state constitution; and it seems now to be assumed among us, as a fundamental maxim of government, that the legislative, executive, and judicial departments ought to be separate, and the powers of one ought not to be exercised by either of the others. ”

“ But a popular assembly is still less fitted to administer, or to dictate in detail to those who have the charge of administration. Even when honestly meant, the interference is almost always injurious. Every branch of public administration is a skilled business, which has its own peculiar principles and traditional rules, many of them not even known in any effectual way, except to those who have at some time had a hand in carrying on the business, and none of them likely to be duly appreciated by persons not practically acquainted with the department. ”

“ The heads of the departments are, in fact, thus precluded from proposing, or vindicating their own measures in the face of the nation in the course of debate; and are compelled to submit them to other men, who are either imperfectly acquainted with the measures, or are different to their success or failure. Thus, that open and public responsibility for measures, which properly belongs to the executive in all governments, and especially in a republican government, as its greatest security and strength, is completely done away. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To every branch of local administration which affects the general interest there should be a corresponding central organ, either a minister, or some specially appointed functionary under him, even if that functionary does no more than collect information from all quarters, and bring the experience acquired in one locality to the knowledge of another where it is wanted. ”

“ Each cabinet officer, again, controls his own department pretty much as he pleases, without consultation with the President or with his coadjutors, and often in the face of determinations which have been reached by the others. ”

“ The third great source of public departments has been the creation in comparatively recent times of a number of administrative boards or commissions, whose duties (except in the case of the Board of Works) are not primarily executive; that is, they are not concerned mainly with direct administration, but rather with the supervision and control of local authorities and of bodies exercising functions of a public or a quasi-public nature. ”

“ But while the Cabinet as a body must 'say the same thing,' its members must also be heads of departments, for the competent administration of which they are responsible. One man must have charge of the Customs, another of Finance, another of Justice, and so on.
This system of heads of departments, each responsible for his own branch, but all uniting in a common responsibility for the common policy, and holding office at the will of a majority in the House of Commons, is known as Responsible Government. ”

“ As fast as the States shall be organized, the Federal Government shall deliver to them the administration of the services which belong to them, and shall settle the responsibility of the federal administration in all that relates to said services and to the payment of the respective officials. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The authority of a federal officer to act derives from federal sources, and the rule which recognizes a privilege under appropriate circumstances as to statements made in the course of duty is one designed to promote the effective functioning of the Federal Government. ”

“ The Administrative Organs of the State shall, under the control and jurisdiction of the Cabinet, carry out self-evaluation, plan and draft their own policies and achieve mutual coordination and liaison among the Administrative Organs of the State in respect of their policies so that they may demonstrate their administrative functions as one body. ”

“ If the Government will not make over the whole of the provincial administration to a popular Ministry responsible to a popular Assembly, let them at least, entrust to them such departments, as Education, Sanitation, Local Self-government, Police, etc. ”

“ The problem of civil service reform is rendered difficult by a misalliance between the Executive and the Legislative branches of our Federal Government. Those Members of Congress who favor the Administration habitually claim and are awarded a virtual monopoly of the Federal offices in their respective States or districts, dictating appointments and removals as interest or caprice may suggest. ”

“ A similar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of the executive departments of administration. Their machinery is good, when the proper tests are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules for their promotion; when the business is conveniently distributed among those who are to transact it, a convenient and methodical order established for its transaction, a correct and intelligible record kept of it after being transacted; when each individual knows for what he is responsible, and is known to others as responsible for it ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The higher State offices are provided for in the constitution, while the subordinate offices are created by act of the legislature. Several States have no lieutenant-governor; in some the secretary of state and the superintendent of public instruction are appointed by the governor, and in others some of the subordinate officers are elected by the people. ”

“ The Department must always be a public function and under Government control and be conducted, more or less, according to public usage. While red-tape rules and customs will to some extent remain, great progress has been made in many directions and public methods, by skilful management, brought nearer to the successes of business life, and the time is near at hand when the answer to the interrogatory first propounded, may be made in the affirmative. ”

“ The points, moreover, which constitute good management of these things are the same every where; there is no good reason why police, or jails, or the administration of justice should be differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another, while there is great peril that in things so important, and to which the most instructed minds available to the state are not more than adequate, the lower average of capacities which alone can be counted on for the service of the localities might commit errors of such magnitude as to be a serious blot upon the general administration of the country. ”

“ The term 'head of a department' means, in this connection, the Secretary in charge of a great division of the executive branch of the government, like the State, Treasury, and War, who is a member of the Cabinet. ”

“ Thus it will be seen that all departments of the government, legislative, judicial, and executive, are placed entirely beyond any responsibility to the people, whose agents they profess to be, and whose rights they assume to dispose of at pleasure. ”

“ The members of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments of thirteen and more States, the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county, corporation, and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed, and having particular acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed, beyond all proportion, both in number and influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system. ”

“ In both England and France a ministry composed of the chief officers of the executive departments are constituted at once the leaders of legislation and the responsible heads of administration,—a binding link between the legislative and executive branches of the government. ”