Reorganization

“ The proposed reorganization of labor, like the proposed system of institutional reform, and like the proposed constructive regulation of large industrial corporations, simply takes advantage of those tendencies in our current methods which look in a formative direction ”

“ Such an appeal, if it is wary, is an appeal to the present situation as undergoing that reorganization that will confer upon it the unification which it lacks; to organization as something to be brought about, to be made. ”

“ The doctrine which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it is an intellectual reorganization that is first wanted—a re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation. ”

“ But the point is the agreement among practical reformers that reform means at bottom no more than moral and political purification. It may, indeed, bring with it the necessity of a certain amount of reorganization; but such reorganization will aim merely at the improvement of the existing political and economic machinery. Present and future reformers must cleanse, oil, and patch a piece of economic and political machinery, which in all essentials is adequate to its purpose. ”

“ In brief, the general law, that the social organism and its units act and react in such ways as to become congruous, implies that every further extension of political organization increases the obstacle to reorganization, not only by increasing the strength of the regulative part and decreasing the strength of the part regulated, but also by producing in citizens thoughts and feelings in harmony with the resulting structure, and out of harmony with anything substantially different. ”

“ Such phenomena are already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of every special service and the descent of power into the hands of a numerical majority.—What plan, then, governs these societies in the way of reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type, what are the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? ”

“ While few radical changes have been made due to the present political development of the country and the social and economic repercussions that a drastic reorganization en­tails, it must be stated that the prime objectives of efficiency, simplicity, and economy have weighed heavily in the de­termination of the changes effected. ”

“ The reorganization of these countries took the form of revolution. It was a time of confusion and violence. Everywhere institutions and governments were crashing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or three countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought bitterly for their possessions. ”

“ They whose courage, talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead.... If we cannot gain their support of the just measures needful for the work of safe reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger. They are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and the experience and the education to enable them to understand ... the present situation. 62 They have the courage as well as the skill to lead the people in the direction their judgments point.... ”

“ For much the same reason their influence is a wholesome one. We shall see that the primary conflict which takes place in any reorganization is between the interests of the corporation which needs a lessening of its burdens, and the interests of the securityholders which is opposed to any reduction in their claims.693 The degree to which the former interest prevails determines the strength of the reorganized company. ”

“ No such reorganization of our industrial methods could be effected without a prolonged period of agitation, which would undoubtedly injure the prosperity and unsettle the standing of the victims of the agitation ”

“ The term 'a party to a reorganization' includes a corporation resulting from a reorganization and includes both corporations in the case of an acquisition by one corporation of at least a majority of the voting stock and at least a majority of the total number of shares of all other classes of stock of another corporation. ”

“ Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward a general plan of reform and wish to go to the common roots of our social evils, demand, first of all, reorganization. ”

“ Reorganization then may begin by the voluntary association of groups of such persons as are thoroughly in accord; these groups may form larger societies for certain special purposes of work or enjoyment; and these societies may agree with other such for still more special aims, and so on till all mankind is voluntarily organized. And since men are changeable in their ideas, purposes and whims, each of the group societies and their connections may dissolve and differently reorganize themselves, as often as they see fit, without ever applying constraint upon one another. ”

“ The net result of this reorganization effort is a government that can provide services in the field where they count most that spends less for political representatives, and more for the benefits of the people, and leads in the realization of national objectives. ”

“ In the cases where it may be found impracticable to maintain regiments in sufficient strength as to justify the retention of the present organization, economy and efficiency would be promoted by consolidation and reorganization. ”

“ Reorganization plans `` (a) Whenever the President, after investigation, finds that changes in the organization of agencies are necessary to carry out any policy set forth in section 901 (a) of this title, he shall prepare a reorganization plan specifying the reorganizations he finds are necessary. Any plan may provide for— `` (1) the transfer of the whole or a part of an agency, or of the whole or a part of the functions thereof, to the jurisdiction and control of another agency ”

“ The wheat output of Argentine or the gold of Klondike is known wherever men meet and trade. Shrinkage or centralization has been such that the humblest clerk in any metropolis may place his hand on the pulse of the world. And because of all this, everywhere is growing order and organization. The church, the state; men, women, and children; the criminal and the law, the honest man and the thief, industry and commerce, capital and labor, the trades and the professions, the arts and the sciences, — all are organizing for pleasure, profit, policy, or intellectual pursuit. ”

“ A new form of economic organisation will necessarily require a new form of political structure. And, whether the change be accomplished suddenly, by a revolution, or slowly, by the way of a gradual evolution, the two changes, political and economic, must go on abreast, hand in hand. ”

“ As part of the same law, we see that the existence of the society at large exceeds in duration that of some of these compound parts. Private unions, local public bodies, secondary national institutions, towns carrying on special industries, may decay, while the nation, maintaining its integrity, evolves in mass and structure.
In both cases, too, the mutually-dependent functions of the various divisions, being severally made up of the actions of many units, it results that these units, dying one by one, are replaced without the function in which they share being sensibly affected. ”

“ Social consolidation is, however, not a simple problem, for social consolidation implies an equivalent capacity for administration. I take it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered, otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization would dissolve. ”

“ We have been dealing exclusively with institutions, and the manner in which their growth has been accomplished. For it is in the institutional life of a people, and in the change and development it undergoes, that are to be found those elements which form the basis for all future changes, whether simply in the form of its government or in the structure of its social system. ”

“ When to the labor of comprehension is added the task of construction and organization from comparative chaos, such as prevailed at Montgomery, and as prevails every-where, as the result of political change, the difficulties are increased tenfold. ”

“ Throughout political organizations the like tendency, though less dominant, is very strong. The gradual establishment of law, by the consolidation of custom, is the formation of something fixed in the midst of things that are changing; and, regarded under its most general aspect as the agency which maintains a permanent order, it is in the very nature of a State-organization to be relatively rigid. ”

“ Periods of rapid changes will follow the periods of slow evolution, and these periods must be taken advantage of—not for increasing and widening the powers of the state, but for reducing them, through the organization in every township or commune of the local groups of producers and consumers, as also the regional, and eventually the international, federations of these groups. ”

“ Soon out of the chaos which is all that you and your kind can ever produce, order must be restored or life will perish; and with the restoration of order comes the restoration of the various strata necessary to organized society. Those that were yesterday at the top may in the new order of things find themselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole. ”

“ Its chief result has been, not so much to create anything new as at once to modify and to strengthen what was old, to call up older institutions to a new life under other forms. But whatever it has done it has done silently; there has not been at any time any violent change of one set of institutions for another. ”

“ When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. ”

“ Or again, if the political structure be rigid, incapable of responding to the changes demanded by growth, the expansive forces of social and economic transformation may rend it in some catastrophe like that of the French Revolution. ”

“ The system of a triple division of specific powers, each one of which was vigorous in its own sphere while at the same time checked and balanced by the other branches of the government, has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. ”

“ If in the course of our investigation it should appear that a gradually diminishing share of freedom remained to the people, yet must we bear in mind that the old organization was one which could not keep pace with the progress of human society, and that it was becoming daily less suited to the ends for which it first existed ”

“ And part of this inability arose from their curious fear of the past. Most movements of reform have looked to the past for great part of their inspiration. To reform means to shape anew, and he pointed out that every revolution involves the idea of a return. ”

“ The historical portion of this work shows the curious way in which a new form of organization, designed for a definite end, often loses sight of its purpose and reverts to a mere variety of the old type, which then has to put out a new development for the original end. ”

“ It contributes, at least, in a high degree, to accomplish a principal end of centralized and regular government;—the giving the greatest efficiency, as well as the greatest order, to the administrative system of the country. ”

“ But as time receded from these historic epochs, engrossed more and more in national development, mercantile aspirations, internal improvements, rivalry of parties, self-aggrandizement—in short, all the agencies and factors inseparable from human nature that influence on material lines, have effaced much of the general solicitude that formerly existed. ”

“ Some people confuse the terms and ideas, concentration and centralization. Proper concentration in complete units by an earlier convergence of authority permits decentralization in administration. A lack of such early concentration makes centralization inevitable. ”

“ Each reform is likely to uncover new points demanding reform, and the movement which was inaugurated for the confirmation of the existing order leads, as though on an inclined plane, either to the overthrow of that order or, if the new demands cannot prevail, to a radical reaction which may reverse the changes already made. ”

“ At the opposite pole of the social scale to that about which shareholding is most apparent, is a [Pg 79] second necessary and quite inevitable consequence of the sudden transition that has occurred from a very nearly static social organization to a violently progressive one. This second consequence of progress is the appearance of a great number of people without either property or any evident function in the social organism. ”

“ What it says about reform in office may be either a prelude to a general change in office, or a mere sop to soothe the hunger, without satisfying it, of the thousand expectants for office who throng the city, and clamor all over the country. ”

“ In our great industrial institutions it does not follow that a change of administration is followed by a wholesale dismissal of the employes of those institutions. On the contrary, comparatively few changes occur. ”

“ The truth here chiefly concerning us, however, is that the continued presence of the one or the other set of conditions fosters a character to which either the centralized or the diffused kind of political organization is appropriate. Existence, generation after generation, in a region where despotic control has arisen, produces an adapted type of nature ”

“ At first a dark moving mass, that seemed to fill the narrow road, was all he could discern, but as this came closer, he could perceive that they marched in companies of divisions, each headed by his leader, who, from time to time, stepped from his place, and observed their order and precision. ”

“ A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration, but the best results for the people. ”