Policy maker

“ For it must be substituted an economic policy which will secure to the nation, and the individual the opportunities and the benefits of the existing organization, while at the same time seeking the diffusion of those benefits over a larger social area. ”

“ No one entertains a higher opinion than myself, also, of that spirit of wise and liberal policy, which has actuated the government of your own great State in the accomplishment of high objects, important to the growth and prosperity both of the State and the city. But all these local advantages, and all this enlightened state policy, could never have made your city what it now is, without the aid and protection of a general government, extending over all the States, and establishing for all a common and uniform system of commercial regulation. ”

“ The simplest organization is regulated by the political heads, and by them the trading is done, or expeditions are organized to go and get supplies. When irrigation is necessary, public control becomes necessary for more important reasons. There must be co-operation on a grand scale and the different steps must be brought into due relation. Ultimate success for all depends on the knowledge and good judgment with which these questions of policy are decided.
In our own society the legislator is needed to give to customs and usages definite form and sanction. ”

“ The decisions having been made with regard to matters of policy, the next and equally important question arises: "Who shall be entrusted with the duty of seeing that policies once decided upon are carried out? Who shall be entrusted with leadership in economic affairs?" [Pg 86]
Those who are entrusted with the carrying out of economic policy in a producers' society may be divided, roughly, into two classes: the executive and the expert. The executive is the director of general policy. The expert is the specialist, selected to do a particular piece of work. ”

“ He was brought up short by a sudden practical obstacle, looming black and foreboding before his impracticality, as life had always loomed before him. How could he manage it? His insurance policy was void in case of suicide, wasn’t it? He would have to contrive somehow to make it look like an accident. He was seared to the bone by the possibility that he might not be able to accomplish even that much against the shrewd business sense of the world which had always defeated him in everything else. ”

“ The Aim of Regulation by the State.—An aim of a government, in all of its economic policy, is to insure the best use of the national resources, and this can often be done by keeping alive free competition. ”

“ The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of the nation in which it operates. ”

“ I shall be more than satisfied if I succeed in giving him a clear insight into the manner in which the delicate task of making State interference with the business of the people not only harmless but beneficial has been set about. It is obvious that the fulfilment of this object must depend upon the soundness of the economic policy pursued, and upon the establishment and maintenance of mutual confidence between the central authority and the popular representative bodies through which the people utilise the new facilities afforded by the State. ”

“ It is that policy which seeks to use the power of this great Republic for the advantage and benefit of private interests; it is that policy which takes money out of the pockets of the people to put it into the pockets of a favored few; it is that policy which, wherever it has prevailed, in every age and every country, has poisoned the very fountains of legislation. ”

“ Problems of financial policy suddenly rise up before him—questions of revenue, of commercial policy, not in the way of general maxims and vague principles, but in the mysterious shape of practical problems to be applied to a given state of circumstances; questions of party politics, where the interests of the public and of the party are curiously mixed together in bewildering confusion. The man at the head of affairs means to do right; let us assume his Cabinet officers mean the same. ”

“ Political fortunes of parties will ebb and flow; top policy men in administrations will come and go; new laws will be passed and old ones amended or repealed. But those who give continuity to administration, those who contribut the basic skill and efficiency to the daily work of government, and those on whom the new as well as the old administration is dependent for smooth functioning of the complicated machinery of modern government are the core of the civil service. ”

“ Our true policy, he declared, is to avoid such complications, to consolidate our power in India, to give its people the best government we can, to organise our administration in every department by a combination of efficiency with economy. ”

“ The topics of informal discussion [Pg 31] among the men and of talks from their leaders may be no longer matters of antagonism toward their employer but rather those of common industrial and community interest. And as industry is sure some day to realize how dependent it is on the integrity, wisdom and statesmanship of the public officials chosen by the people to make and administer the laws, so it will surely come to take an active part in selecting these public officials and in determining the policies they are to further. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Obviously, what is most needed is recognition of the fact that industry is not a matter which concerns only one party, but that it is of vital concern to all four: to Capital, to Labor, to Management, and to the Community, and that no one of the four is entitled to a monopoly of control. ”

“ The chief business of government, from which, perforce, its essential nature must be derived, consists in the control and adjustment of conflicting economic interests. After enumerating the various forms of propertied interests which spring up inevitably in modern society, he adds: “The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the ordinary operations of the government.” ”

“ On March 30, 1901, Castro was elected by Congress to fill out the unexpired part of Andrade’s term and in the following February he was elected Constitutional President. Then began in earnest his reign of robbery, through the establishment of monopolies whose profits went to his private purse, and his vicious anti-foreign policy which, through the murders and injustices that were committed in its name, made the Boxer uprising in China look like a soft-spoken protest. ”

“ And so on the one hand, we know this has to be lead by the private sector. We do think that smart policy on our part can send the right signals to the private sector. And you guys are helping us do that. ”

“ The Realm may further legislate, in case of urgent necessity and in the interest of the national economy, to oblige business undertakings or associations to combine, on the basis of self administration, with a view to securing the co-operation of all the productive forces of the nation, to associating employers and employed in the administration, and to regulating production, manufacture, distribution, employment, prices, as also import and export of goods on principles of public economy. ”

“ My father and grandfather were brought up among City people and I am proud of it; but it is folly to suppose that starting and developing a great business is the same as initiating and conducting a great policy, or running a big Government Department. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it was a pleasure to see the growing manifestation of a commonwealth spirit, the organization of public opinion, and the clearer vision of the demands of public service. Even among the officials the idea that the Government was merely a taxing and office-holding organization was giving way, especially among the younger men, to a desire that the functions of government should be used for developmental purposes, in helping the people towards better methods in agriculture and industry, in encouraging improved communications and public works of many kinds. ”

“ And you who desire the administrative business of the Government performed in a business-like way by honest and capable public servants, where will you go? Will you go to the Democratic party, which has no other reform idea than an eager desire to take the whole administrative machinery of the Government suddenly to pieces, and to fill it as rapidly as possible with politicians demanding offices as spoils? ”

“ At present, the State is largely concerned with the maintenance of conditions under which the economic and business life may operate equally and prosperously. The State in one sense is the master of the people. In another sense it is merely their creature and their agent for such purposes as they choose to assign it. Is the State, then, to absorb the industrial functions, and are we to develop into a socialistic commonwealth? Or, shall the political democracy and the coöperative organization of business life go on side by side, related at many points but in the main distinct from each other? ”

“ Others progressively inclined accept the principle of government regulation and believe that in that way the people, through their political representatives, can control the owners and managers. Others think that the best results can be obtained by giving a place on the governing board of an industry to working men alongside the representatives of capital and permitting them to work out their problems on a mutual basis. ”

“ No great business organizations are built up through continual variations of policy. Similarly, in the building up of a university, a government department, a state, or a social order, consecutive and disciplined persistence in established ways is a requisite of progress. ”

“ The question, however, is not of great practical moment, and the matter may be likened to the general policy of the state when it contracts out for any of its work to be done. If economy and efficiency are secured, it is felt that there can be little ground for objection. ”

“ Every trade and business should be conducted by a society voluntarily formed of all those who choose to engage in it, electing and removing their own officials, determining their own policy, and co-operating by free arrangement with other similar bodies. ”

“ So far as this is the case, it is evident that government, by excluding or even by superseding individual agency, either substitutes a less qualified instrumentality for one better qualified, or at any rate substitutes its own mode of accomplishing the work, for all the variety of modes which would be tried by a number of equally qualified persons aiming at the same end; a competition by many degrees more propitious to the progress of improvement, than any uniformity of system. ”

“ The second major policy I desire to lay before you has to do with the growing concentration of economic power and the threat to free competitive private enterprise. In 1941 the Temporary National Economic Committee completed a comprehensive investigation into the workings of the national economy. The Committee's study showed that, despite a half century of anti-trust law enforcement, one of the gravest threats to our welfare lay in the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of giant organizations. ”

“ But to consider the specialized organization of our local politics as the direct result of specialized organization of American business is wholly to misunderstand its significance. The two processes are the parallel effects of the same conditions and ideas working in different fields. Business efficiency under the conditions prevailing in our political and economic fabric demanded the "Captain of Industry." Political efficiency under our system of local government demanded the "Boss." ”

“ All the officers of government, and all the appointments for the administration of justice and the collection of the public revenue, which are transferred from the individual to the aggregate sovereignty of the states, will necessarily turn the stream of influence and emolument into a new channel. Every person, therefore, who either enjoys, or expects to enjoy a place of profit under the present establishment, will object to the proposed innovation? ”

“ But in the many analogous cases which it is best to resign to voluntary agency, the community needs some other security for the fit performance of the service than the interest of the managers; and it is the part of government, either to subject the business to reasonable conditions for the general advantage, or to retain such power over it, that the profits of the monopoly may at least be obtained for the public. ”